Bengaluru: Country’s premier investigating agency the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has sounded a countrywide alert against a malicious software threat that uses an update related to the Coronavirus pandemic.

“Based on inputs received from INTERPOL, CBI has issued an alert relating to a banking Trojan known as Cerberus. This malicious software takes advantage of COVID-19 pandemic to impersonate and send SMS using the lure of COVID-19 related content to download the embedded malicious link, which deploys its malicious app usually spread via phishing campaigns to trick users into installing it on their smartphones,” a CBI statement said.

Simply put, the Trojan claims to provide COVID-19 related information and urges unsuspecting recipients to install it in their smartphones.

This Trojan primarily focusses on stealing financial data such as credit card numbers. In addition, it can use overlay attacks to trick victims into providing personal information and can capture two-factor authentication details, the CBI said.