WARNING: A Dangerous New Text Message Targets Freedom Mobile Users On Android With Malware

If you’re on Freedom Mobile here in Canada, and you have an Android phone, there is a super dangerous text message that you need to be aware of. Here’s the text message in question:

Now what’s dangerous about this message is if you click the link, you will be prompted to download and Android .APK file and give it all sorts of permissions. If you do that, it will not end well for you because the .APK file in question looks like this on Virus Total:

In short, a lot of the antivirus sites detect this as malware that likely does all sorts of nasty things to your Android phone. And what’s really crafty about this is if you try to access this website from anything other than an Android phone, it will not download the payload as it checks the browser that you’re using. Thus it evades detection for a longer period of time.

Here’s some quick facts: Freedom Mobile, nor any other carrier will ask you to download a software update of any sort to “continue to use your services”. Thus if you get a text like this, you need to delete it ASAP and not click on any links. Nor should you install anything if prompted. And if you’re on an Android phone, this reinforces that you need to be super careful of what you install. Because it doesn’t take much to get pwned by a threat actor.

Speaking of this threat actor, it’s clear that this is someone who on the surface appears to be skilled and is likely to target Bell, Rogers, and TELUS customers next when their luck with Freedom Mobile runs out. So customers of all phone carriers need to be aware of this as it is highly likely that this is coming for you next.

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