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The GSM Association (GSMA), the governing body that oversees the development of the Rich Communications Services (RCS) protocol, on Tuesday, said it's working towards implementing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to secure messages sent between the Android and iOS ecosystems. "The next major milestone is for the RCS Universal Profile to add important user protections such as interoperable end-to-end encryption," Tom Van Pelt, technical director of GSMA, said . "This will be the first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between different computing platforms, addressing significant technical challenges such as key federation and cryptographically-enforced group membership." The development comes a day after Apple officially rolled out iOS 18 with support for RCS in its Messages app, which comes with advanced features like message reactions, typing indications, read receipts, and high-quality media sharing, among others. RCS, an impro

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new variant of an Android banking trojan called TrickMo that comes packed with new capabilities to evade analysis and display fake login screens to capture victims' banking credentials. "The mechanisms include using malformed ZIP files in combination with JSONPacker," Cleafy security researchers Michele Roviello and Alessandro Strino said . "In addition, the application is installed through a dropper app that shares the same anti-analysis mechanisms." "These features are designed to evade detection and hinder cybersecurity professionals' efforts to analyze and mitigate the malware." TrickMo, first caught in the wild by CERT-Bund in September 2019, has a history of targeting Android devices, particularly targeting users in Germany to siphon one-time passwords (OTPs) and other two-factor authentication (2FA) codes to facilitate financial fraud. The mobile-focused malware is assessed to be the work of

Even as cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, the number one attack vector for unauthorized access remains phished credentials ( Verizon DBIR, 2024 ). Solving this problem resolves over 80% of your corporate risk, and a solution is possible.  However, most tools available on the market today cannot offer a complete defense against this attack vector because they were architected to deliver probabilistic defenses. Learn more about the characteristics of Beyond Identity that allow us to deliver deterministic defenses.  The Challenge: Phishing and Credential Theft Phishing attacks trick users into revealing their credentials via deceptive sites or messages sent via SMS, email, and/or voice calls. Traditional defenses, such as end-user training or basic multi-factor authentication (MFA), lower the risk at best but cannot eliminate it. Users may still fall prey to scams, and stolen credentials can be exploited. Legacy MFA is a particularly urgent problem, given that attackers

Bank customers in the Central Asia region have been targeted by a new strain of Android malware codenamed Ajina.Banker since at least November 2023 with the goal of harvesting financial information and intercepting two-factor authentication (2FA) messages. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB, which discovered the threat in May 2024, said the malware is propagated via a network of Telegram channels set up by the threat actors under the guise of legitimate applications related to banking, payment systems, and government services, or everyday utilities. "The attacker has a network of affiliates motivated by financial gain, spreading Android banker malware that targets ordinary users," security researchers Boris Martynyuk, Pavel Naumov, and Anvar Anarkulov said . Targets of the ongoing campaign include countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. There is evidence to suggest that some aspects of

Nearly 1.3 million Android-based TV boxes running outdated versions of the operating system and belonging to users spanning 197 countries have been infected by a new malware dubbed Vo1d (aka Void). "It is a backdoor that puts its components in the system storage area and, when commanded by attackers, is capable of secretly downloading and installing third-party software," Russian antivirus vendor Doctor Web said in a report published today. A majority of the infections have been detected in Brazil, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Russia, Tunisia, Ecuador, Malaysia, Algeria, and Indonesia. It's currently not known what the source of the infection is, although it's suspected that it may have either involved an instance of prior compromise that allows for gaining root privileges or the use of unofficial firmware versions with built-in root access. The following TV models have been targeted as part of the campaign - KJ-SMART4KVIP (Android 10.1; KJ-SMA

Android device users in South Korea have emerged as a target of a new mobile malware campaign that delivers a new type of threat dubbed SpyAgent . The malware "targets mnemonic keys by scanning for images on your device that might contain them," McAfee Labs researcher SangRyol Ryu said in an analysis, adding the targeting footprint has broadened in scope to include the U.K. The campaign makes use of bogus Android apps that are disguised as seemingly legitimate banking, government facilities, streaming, and utility apps in an attempt to trick users into installing them. As many as 280 fake applications have been detected since the start of the year. It all starts with SMS messages bearing booby-trapped links that urge users to download the apps in question in the form of APK files hosted on deceptive sites. Once installed, they are designed to request intrusive permissions to collect data from the devices. This includes contacts, SMS messages, photos, and other device i

Google has released its monthly security updates for the Android operating system to address a known security flaw that it said has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-32896 (CVSS score: 7.8), relates to a case of privilege escalation in the Android Framework component. According to the description of the bug in the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD), it concerns a logic error that could lead to local escalation of privileges without requiring any additional execution privileges. "There are indications that CVE-2024-32896 may be under limited, targeted exploitation," Google said in its Android Security Bulletin for September 2024. It's worth noting that CVE-2024-32896 was first disclosed in June 2024 as impacting only the Google-owned Pixel lineup. There are currently no details on how the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, although GrapheneOS maintainers revealed that CVE-2024-32896

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered new Android malware that can relay victims' contactless payment data from physical credit and debit cards to an attacker-controlled device with the goal of conducting fraudulent operations. The Slovak cybersecurity company is tracking the novel malware as NGate, stating it observed the crimeware campaign targeting three banks in Czechia. The malware "has the unique ability to relay data from victims' payment cards, via a malicious app installed on their Android devices, to the attacker's rooted Android phone," researchers Lukáš Štefanko and Jakub Osmani said in an analysis. The activity is part of a broader campaign that has been found to target financial institutions in Czechia since November 2023 using malicious progressive web apps (PWAs) and WebAPKs. The first recorded use of NGate was in March 2024. The end goal of the attacks is to clone near-field communication (NFC) data from victims' physical payment ca

A large percentage of Google's own Pixel devices shipped globally since September 2017 included dormant software that could be used to stage nefarious attacks and deliver various kinds of malware. The issue manifests in the form of a pre-installed Android app called "Showcase.apk" that comes with excessive system privileges, including the ability to remotely execute code and install arbitrary packages on the device, according to mobile security firm iVerify. "The application downloads a configuration file over an unsecure connection and can be manipulated to execute code at the system level," it said in an analysis published jointly with Palantir Technologies and Trail of Bits. "The application retrieves the configuration file from a single U.S.-based, AWS-hosted domain over unsecured HTTP, which leaves the configuration vulnerable and can make the device vulnerable." The app in question is called Verizon Retail Demo Mode ("com.customermob

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed four medium-severity security flaws in the open-source OpenVPN software that could be chained to achieve remote code execution (RCE) and local privilege escalation (LPE). "This attack chain could enable attackers to gain full control over targeted endpoints, potentially resulting in data breaches, system compromise, and unauthorized access to sensitive information," Vladimir Tokarev of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Community said . That said, the exploit, presented by Black Hat USA 2024, requires user authentication and an advanced understanding of OpenVPN's inner workings. The flaws affect all versions of OpenVPN prior to version 2.6.10 and 2.5.10. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2024-27459 - A stack overflow vulnerability leading to a Denial-of-service (DoS) and LPE in Windows CVE-2024-24974 - Unauthorized access to the "\\openvpn\\service" named pipe in Windows, allowing an attacker to remotely inte

Cybersecurity researchers have lifted the lid on a new technique adopted by threat actors behind the Chameleon Android banking trojan targeting users in Canada by masquerading as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) app. "Chameleon was seen masquerading as a CRM app, targeting a Canadian restaurant chain operating internationally," Dutch security outfit ThreatFabric said in a technical report published Monday. The campaign, spotted in July 2024, targeted customers in Canada and Europe, indicating an expansion of its victimology footprint from Australia, Italy, Poland, and the U.K. The use of CRM-related themes for the malicious dropper apps containing the malware points to the targets being customers in the hospitality sector and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) employees. The dropper artifacts are also designed to bypass Restricted Settings imposed by Google in Android 13 and later in order to prevent sideloaded apps from requesting for dangerous permissions (e.g., acc

Users in Russia have been the target of a previously undocumented Android post-compromise spyware called LianSpy since at least 2021. Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky, which discovered the malware in March 2024, noted its use of Yandex Cloud, a Russian cloud service, for command-and-control (C2) communications as a way to avoid having a dedicated infrastructure and evade detection. "This threat is equipped to capture screencasts, exfiltrate user files, and harvest call logs and app lists," security researcher Dmitry Kalinin said in a new technical report published Monday. It's currently not clear how the spyware is distributed, but the Russian company said it's likely deployed through either an unknown security flaw or direct physical access to the target phone. The malware-laced apps are disguised as Alipay or an Android system service. LianSpy, once activated, determines if it's running as a system app to operate in the background using administrator privi

Google has addressed a high-severity security flaw impacting the Android kernel that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-36971, has been described as a case of remote code execution impacting the kernel. "There are indications that CVE-2024-36971 may be under limited, targeted exploitation," the tech giant noted in its monthly Android security bulletin for August 2024. As is typically the case, the company did not share any additional specifics on the nature of the cyber attacks exploiting the flaw or attribute the activity to a particular threat actor or group. Google's own Pixel line is also impacted by the bug, according to its Pixel update bulletin . That said, Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with reporting the flaw, suggesting that it's likely being exploited by commercial spyware vendors to infiltrate Android devices in narrowly targeted attacks. The Augus

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Android banking trojan called BlankBot targeting Turkish users with an aim to steal financial information. "BlankBot features a range of malicious capabilities, which include customer injections, keylogging, screen recording and it communicates with a control server over a WebSocket connection," Intel 471 said in an analysis published last week. Discovered on July 24, 2024, BlankBot is said to be undergoing active development, with the malware abusing Android's accessibility services permissions to obtain full control over the infected devices. The names of some of the malicious APK files containing BlankBot are listed below - app-release.apk (com.abcdefg.w568b) app-release.apk (com.abcdef.w568b) app-release-signed (14).apk (com.whatsapp.chma14) app.apk (com.whatsapp.chma14p) app.apk (com.whatsapp.w568bp) showcuu.apk (com.whatsapp.w568b) Like the recently resurfaced Mandrake Android trojan, BlankBot implement

A new malicious campaign has been observed making use of malicious Android apps to steal users' SMS messages since at least February 2022 as part of a large-scale campaign. The malicious apps, spanning over 107,000 unique samples, are designed to intercept one-time passwords (OTPs) used for online account verification to commit identity fraud. "Of those 107,000 malware samples, over 99,000 of these applications are/were unknown and unavailable in generally available repositories," mobile security firm Zimperium said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This malware was monitoring one-time password messages across over 600 global brands, with some brands having user counts in the hundreds of millions of users." Victims of the campaign have been detected in 113 countries, with India and Russia topping the list, followed by Brazil, Mexico, the U.S., Ukraine, Spain, and Turkey. The starting point of the attack is the installation of a malicious app that

A new iteration of a sophisticated Android spyware called Mandrake has been discovered in five applications that were available for download from the Google Play Store and remained undetected for two years. The applications attracted a total of more than 32,000 installations before being pulled from the app storefront, Kaspersky said in a Monday write-up. A majority of the downloads originated from Canada, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Peru, and the U.K. "The new samples included new layers of obfuscation and evasion techniques, such as moving malicious functionality to obfuscated native libraries, using certificate pinning for C2 communications, and performing a wide array of tests to check if Mandrake was running on a rooted device or in an emulated environment," researchers Tatyana Shishkova and Igor Golovin said . Mandrake was first documented by Romanian cybersecurity vendor Bitdefender in May 2020, describing its deliberate approach to infect a handful of devices

A zero-day security flaw in Telegram's mobile app for Android called EvilVideo made it possible for attackers to malicious files disguised as harmless-looking videos. The exploit appeared for sale for an unknown price in an underground forum on June 6, 2024, ESET said. Following responsible disclosure on June 26, the issue was addressed by Telegram in version 10.14.5 released on July 11. "Attackers could share malicious Android payloads via Telegram channels, groups, and chat, and make them appear as multimedia files," security researcher Lukáš Štefanko said in a report. It's believed that the payload is concocted using Telegram's application programming interface ( API ), which allows for programmatic uploads of multimedia files to chats and channels. In doing so, it enables an attacker to camouflage a malicious APK file as a 30-second video.  Users who click on the video are displayed an actual warning message stating the video cannot be played and urges t

A suspected pro-Houthi threat group targeted at least three humanitarian organizations in Yemen with Android spyware designed to harvest sensitive information. These attacks, attributed to an activity cluster codenamed OilAlpha , entail a new set of malicious mobile apps that come with their own supporting infrastructure, Recorded Future's Insikt Group said . Targets of the ongoing campaign include, CARE International, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), and the Saudi Arabian King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre. "The OilAlpha threat group is highly likely active and executing targeted activity against humanitarian and human rights organizations operating in Yemen, and potentially throughout the Middle East," the cybersecurity company said. OilAlpha was first documented in May 2023 in connection with an espionage campaign targeting development, humanitarian, media, and non-governmental organizations in the Arabian peninsula. These attacks leveraged What