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In Q1 2026, mobile banking Trojans saw a significant surge, with Mamont variants driving a 50% increase in malicious installation packages. Additionally, a sophisticated new variant of the SparkCat crypto stealer was identified in official app stores, employing custom virtual machines and OCR techniques to compromise both Android and iOS users.
ESET researchers discovered a cluster of 28 fraudulent Android applications, dubbed CallPhantom, that accumulated over 7.3 million downloads on Google Play. These apps deceive users by falsely claiming to retrieve call and message logs for arbitrary phone numbers, instead presenting hardcoded, randomly generated data to extort subscription payments via Google Play billing, UPI, or direct card entry.
