Counterfeit Phones Carrying Hidden Revamped Triada Malware

NEWS BRIEF: Counterfeit Android smartphones have been found with a modified Triada remote-access Trojan embedded in device firmware and system frameworks, resulting in persistent, hard-to-detect infections. Researchers at Kaspersky and Darktrace report the malware targets banking and messaging apps, steals cryptocurrency and accounts, can send messages on behalf of victims, and exfiltrates data to command-and-control servers using algorithmically generated hostnames; over 2,600 users (mostly in Russia) have been affected and a supply-chain compromise is suspected.