Researchers at Group-IB have discovered a new NFC relay malware family, purpose-built to capture live card data via NFC and forward it in real time to attackers. They dubbed it “WindRelay.”
NFC (Near Field Communication) is wireless technology that allows devices such as smartphones, payment cards, and payment terminals to communicate when they’re very close together. So, instead of stealing your physical bank card, the attackers capture NFC activity on an infected mobile phone and relay it in real time to a criminal-controlled device held against a contactless payment terminal, or an ATM that supports contactless cash withdrawals.
The researchers describe a 13-minute call impersonating a bank, in which a victim was persuaded to install an Android app labelled with the bank’s name. That app was a remote access Trojan (RAT) called SpyNote. SpyNote gave the attacker remote control of the phone and enabled the quiet installation of a second app, WindRelay.
Read more…
Source: Malware Bytes Labs
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Adaptavist Group breach spawns imposter emails as ransomware crew claims mega-haul
April 21, 2026
UK enterprise software consultancy The Adaptavist Group is investigating a security breach after an intruder logged in with stolen credentials, while a ransomware crew claims it grabbed far more than the company is currently admitting. In a letter to customers, Adaptavist’s CEO Simon Haighton-Williams said the biz detected an “IT security incident” in late March after ...
- Amtrak data breach exposes 2.1M records, reports suggest larger leak
April 20, 2026
Booking a train ticket shouldn’t come with a side of data exposure, but that’s the situation Amtrak customers are now facing. The rail service is dealing with a breach after hackers claimed to have accessed and released millions of customer records online. The exposed dataset was confirmed to contain at least 2.1 million unique accounts, although ...
- North Korean hackers blamed for $290M crypto theft
April 20, 2026
Over the weekend, hackers stole more than $290 million in cryptocurrency from Kelp DAO, a protocol that allows users to earn yields on idle crypto investments. By Monday, LayerZero, one of the projects affected by the hack, accused North Korea of carrying out the heist. The hack is now the largest crypto theft of the year ...
- Hackers are abusing Apple account notifications to distribute malware, steal money and data
April 20, 2026
Scammers have found a way to abuse Apple’s email notification system to deliver phishing messages and trick people into giving away sensitive data and system access. Recently, people started receiving emails from the email.apple.com domain, notifying them of a $899 iPhone purchase via PayPal. The email also shared a phone number for the victims to call, ...
- App host Vercel says it was hacked and customer data stolen
April 20, 2026
Cloud app hosting giant Vercel this weekend said hackers had breached its internal systems and accessed customer data. Hackers have claimed they have stolen sensitive customer credentials from Vercel’s systems and are selling the data online. In a statement on Sunday, Vercel said the breach originated from another software maker, Context AI. One of Vercel’s employees ...
- Tracking Mirai Variant Nexcorium: A Vulnerability-Driven IoT Botnet Campaign
April 17, 2026
IoT devices are increasingly prime targets for large-scale attacks due to their widespread use, lack of patching, and often weak security settings. Threat actors continue exploiting known vulnerabilities to gain initial access and deploy malware that can persist, spread, and cause distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. FortiGuard Labs has analyzed a recent campaign exploiting CVE-2024-3721 in TBK ...