Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has reportedly discovered a new type of malware that uses optical character recognition (OCR) to sift through victims’ smartphones and steal their crypto wallet data.
The malware targets screenshot collections on Android and iOS devices, searching for snippets of text relating to crypto wallet recovery phrases.
Phishing attacks leveraging OCR malware could shift surveillance from text-centred to image-focused.
Although the malware has been found in Apple’s App Store and Google Play, this is reportedly the first known case of such an app being available on Apple’s official marketplace.
Researchers identified several infected apps on Google Play, with totals downloads of more than 242,000, that contained the OCR malware.