SMS Virus Developed by Iranian Hacker Claims 100/000 Victims in Iran

In recent weeks a story that has attracted attention of many people has been the development and spreading of a virus by SMS, which was developed by Iranian hacker Pourya Emanverdi, who uses the username num1vps online. The story is of this nature that Mr. Emanverdi’s creation spreads by a very intelligent and well designed social engineering; it was described by a researcher as “beautiful social engineering’. In this way, it has been able to claim something like 100/000 victims in Iran so far. It encourages the user to open a link by saying that by clicking the link they will get 2gigabyte of free internet. The messages to invite the user to click the link are not all the same one, some say “Click here for 2Gb free internet!” but some say “Hello, I just got 2Gb free internet from this link”. Once the user clicked the link, it opens a Telegram channel. In this Telegram channel the user is encouraged and invited actually to install the Android application. The user installs the application, then this software brings user’s handset into Silent state, then goes ahead to send messages about 2Gb free internet to every contact in user’s phone contact list. So, the virus spreads and propagates itself more, because the same thing will repeat for these users too. 

This behavior was analyzed by two security experts in cyber field, one is “hoshmand” who runs the website scriptics.ir and another who is manager of Webamooz. It has been published on CYAXARES CHANNEL.

It is clear that the development of such virus is against the law of Islamic Republic of Iran and many other countries also. The social engineering part of this is very admirable and is excellent and many people can learn from it. But, this is at least the second time that num1vps aka Pourya Emanverdi has done this kind of activities, and everybody should be watchful in case of more similar attacks. Finally we must remind all users the same thing that “hoshmand” and Webamooz manager and H.BBF3.4, who reported this to ICNA, have made clear: if something looks good and you don’t know why you should get this good thing free, it is probably not real and there is probably some kind of trap behind it. 2Gb free internet is very nice! But always we should think about these things, and we should not click on links in messages without checking first what they are. 

It is worth to note that the website that the link in the messages directs to is not visible from PCs but only from mobile devices! This should also make a user think about this. 

Lastly, for deleting this malware, you have to go to Settings, Application Manager, then you have to find the software, then uninstall it from Settings. But if you cannot delete it from this method, you need to factory reset your phone. Please pass on this news to anybody you think may be infected so to prevent more infections.

ICNA makes many thanks to Hossein H.BBF3.4 for his contribution.

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