ESET disclosed CallPhantom, a campaign of 28 fraudulent Android apps on Google Play that promised to reveal call histories, SMS records, and WhatsApp call logs for any phone number. Combined downloads: 7.3 million. After payment (weekly, monthly, or annual subscriptions up to $80), users receive fabricated phone numbers and names hardcoded into the apps. Targeting was India-focused (apps came pre-set with +91 country code and UPI integration via Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm) plus broader Asia-Pacific. Some apps embedded direct credit card forms, violating Play policy and making refunds harder. Google removed the 28 apps after ESET's report.
ESET disclosed GopherWhisper, a previously undocumented China-linked spy group active since at least November 2023 and targeting Mongolian government systems. The group's defining trick: instead of building its own command-and-control servers, it sends instructions through ordinary cloud services - private Slack channels, Discord servers, Outlook draft email folders, and the file.io file-sharing service. Because the malware traffic looks like normal Slack and Discord usage, network monitoring tools largely ignore it. ESET extracted thousands of operator messages from the attackers' own Slack and Discord workspaces, and even found a 'How to write RATs.txt' file in their Downloads folder.
TrustStrike Labs