Particle.news
Download on the App Store

TrickMo Android Trojan Moves C2 to TON to Turn Infected Phones Into Network Exits

The shift to a decentralized overlay complicates takedowns and lets fraud traffic appear to come from victims’ own networks.

Overview

  • ThreatFabric, which reported the change Monday, says the latest TrickMo build tracked as TrickMo C now sends commands over The Open Network using an on‑device TON proxy and .adnl identities.
  • Researchers say the TON overlay hides operator servers from public DNS and makes the malware’s traffic blend with legitimate TON use, weakening domain takedowns and simple network blocks.
  • The campaigns observed in January and February targeted banking and crypto wallet users in France, Italy and Austria using TikTok‑themed lures delivered via Facebook ads and dropper sites.
  • New operator tools such as curl, dnslookup, ping, telnet, traceroute, SSH tunneling and an authenticated SOCKS5 proxy let attackers probe networks and route actions through the victim’s IP address.
  • TrickMo remains a modular device‑takeover trojan with overlays, keylogging, screen streaming and OTP interception, and dormant Pine and NFC components suggest the operators may add features later.