iOS Trojan steals facial recognition data on iPhone

Researchers from cybersecurity company Group-IB have detected malware that can steal facial recognition data from iPhones to use in banking frauds. This is the “Gold Digger”, first trojan for iOSAccording to the report published on Thursday (15).

The variant infecting Apple mobile phones, called “GoldPickaxe”, is based on malicious program originally created to infect Android devices. Once installed on the victim’s device captures facial data and identity documents stored there and can also intercept text messages.

The cybercriminals behind the campaign use artificial intelligence (AI) with information obtained from Face ID to create deepfakes pretending to be real people. Accessing your bank accounts to withdraw money. There have also been reports of fake videos being used in other types of online scams, such as soliciting money from victims’ families.

Malicious campaign involving iOS trojan discovered in October last year targets users iPhones of people living in Asia, especially Vietnam and Thailand. However, it cannot be ruled out that the action, which requires the attention of Apple system users, will spread to other countries.

How does it infect a mobile phone?

According to those responsible for the discovery, the Trojan horse began to be distributed through a network. Malicious app in Apple’s TestFlight programserves testers and developers. With the software removed from the platform, cybercriminals turned to the Mobile Device Management (MDM) feature.

This functionality can be enabled by companies to customize certain aspects of the devices under their management. Perpetrators through social engineering Convinced MDM users to download malicious file outside App StoreIt infects victims’ devices.

In that case, Apple is working on a solution that will prevent the Trojan from taking actionKeeping in mind that GoldDigger can also infect Android devices, it is recommended to avoid downloading applications through TestFlight and not add an MDM profile to the iPhone, even if the application does not arrive.