Proofpoint Researchers have uncovered a new piece of mobile malware that purports to be a point-of-sale management app but is actually a powerful information stealer.
It says that while this app is initially targeting users in China and Mandarin-speaking regions, malicious apps that masquerade as something benign but are actually dangerous are quite common worldwide.
It has discovered almost 16,000 publishers - distributing malicious apps through both mainstream and third-party app stores (most of which masquerade as legitimate apps but are in fact far different from what they claim to be). Organisations, their employees, and average users all must take the time to verify that requested permissions are reasonable as they install new apps.
Dave Jevans, Vice President of Mobile at Proofpoint, said: "Proofpoint has scanned over 45 million apps from 300 app stores and over 100 countries worldwide. Despite the best efforts of the mobile device platform vendors, we still see over 1% of the world’s 1.3 million app developers releasing malicious apps."
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"Apps that pretend to be from legitimate payments providers, Point-of-Sale vendors, and banks continue to be published on the main app stores and on the hundreds of third party app stores for both Android and iOS. Information stealing apps threaten not only consumers but also enterprises, by compromising email addresses, passwords, address books, calendars and a variety of information that is used to target users in blended threat campaigns that may involve email or SMS targeting later,” he added.
At first glance, the app -- which was found in a public repository -- appears legitimate, featuring an icon showing a point-of-sale machine and Chinese characters that translate to "Mitsubishi POS Terminal Management"
Proofpoint says this particular app caught its attention in part because of the complete information stealing capabilities that were built into the code. More importantly, though, the advertised function of the app - a point-of-sale system control app - automatically targeted a niche audience with potential access to a variety of sensitive data for retailers and their customers.