Israeli soldiers fall prey to World Cup FIFA 2018 Score App conducting Espionage

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Israel military has released a media statement today saying that scores of its soldiers have fallen prey to a notorious World Cup FIFA Football 2018 app which was actually meant to stream live scores. 

But in reality, the app was conducting espionage on those who have downloaded it and over 100 soldiers from Israel is said to have fallen prey to it.

Security researchers from the military say that the app was developed by a hackers group connected to Hamas community and was meant to conduct spyware activities on the smartphones of soldiers.

When questioned on how the app reached the mobile phones of the soldiers, a spokesperson from the Israel military said that the malicious app was available on the Google Play Store as a World Cup Football score tracking app and was also present on two fake online dating apps.
 
On further questioning about the dating apps, the spokesperson chose to remain silent at first. But later said that the infected dating app reached the victims via a spoofing email.

However, as per a source reporting from Reuters, the malicious apps are said to have reached the soldiers through Hamas operatives using false identities who contacted and encouraged the soldiers via social media platforms to download the apps.

On the request put forward by the Military through ‘proper channel’, the bogus world cup football score showing apps were removed from the Google Play Store.

Now, the main point, the app in question is said to have prevailed with the name “Golden Cup” on Google Play Store and was found to be tracking down user’s phone calls, messages, images, and videos along with all device-related info including GPS Location and social media updates. It was actually devised as a spyware to keep an update of all the activity taking place on the smartphones of soldiers and was also found to be transmitting data to remote servers located in the Middle East.

More details are awaited!

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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