Android | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Chipmaker Qualcomm has released more information about three high-severity security flaws that it said came under "limited, targeted exploitation" back in October 2023. The  vulnerabilities  are as follows - CVE-2023-33063  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Memory corruption in DSP Services during a remote call from HLOS to DSP. CVE-2023-33106  (CVSS score: 8.4) - Memory corruption in Graphics while submitting a large list of sync points in an AUX command to the IOCTL_KGSL_GPU_AUX_COMMAND. CVE-2023-33107  (CVSS score: 8.4) - Memory corruption in Graphics Linux while assigning shared virtual memory region during IOCTL call. Google's Threat Analysis Group and Google Project Zero  revealed  back in October 2023 that the three flaws, along with  CVE-2022-22071  (CVSS score: 8.4), have been exploited in the wild as part of limited, targeted attacks. A security researcher named luckyrb, the Google Android Security team, and TAG researcher Benoît Sevens and Jann Horn of Google Proje

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new sophisticated Android malware called  FjordPhantom  that has been observed targeting users in Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam since early September 2023. "Spreading primarily through messaging services, it combines app-based malware with social engineering to defraud banking customers," Oslo-based mobile app security firm Promon  said  in an analysis published Thursday. Propagated mainly via email, SMS, and messaging apps, attack chains trick recipients into downloading a purported banking app that comes fitted with legitimate features but also incorporates rogue components. Victims are then subjected to a social engineering technique akin to telephone-oriented attack delivery ( TOAD ), which involves calling a bogus call center to receive step-by-step instructions for running the app. A key characteristic of the malware that sets it apart from other banking trojans of its kind is the use of

Wing Security recently announced that basic third-party risk assessment is  now available as a free product . But it raises the questions of how SaaS is connected to third-party risk management (TPRM) and what companies should do to ensure a proper SaaS-TPRM process is in place. In this article we will share 5 tips to manage the third-party risks associated with SaaS, but first...  What exactly is Third-Party Risk Management in SaaS? SaaS is rapidly growing, offering businesses convenience, swift implementations, and valuable opportunities. However, this growth introduces a security challenge where risks arise from the interconnected nature of SaaS supply chains. It is clear that before onboarding a new contractor or vendor, we need due diligence, security checks, and referrals. However, we now understand that in the SaaS domain, applications are, in fact, the go-to vendor of choice.  Let's explain: Any employee can very easily connect SaaS vendors to company data, granting them pe

An Android malware campaign targeting Iranian banks has expanded its capabilities and incorporated additional evasion tactics to fly under the radar. That's according to a new report from Zimperium, which discovered more than 200 malicious apps associated with the malicious operation, with the threat actor also observed carrying out phishing attacks against the targeted financial institutions. The campaign first came to light in late July 2023 when Sophos detailed a cluster of 40 credential-harvesting apps targeting customers of Bank Mellat, Bank Saderat, Resalat Bank, and Central Bank of Iran. The primary goal of the bogus apps is to trick victims into granting them extensive permissions as well as harvest banking login credentials and credit card details by abusing Android's accessibility services . "The corresponding legitimate versions of the malicious apps are available at Cafe Bazaar, an Iranian Android marketplace, and have millions of downloads," Sophos

Android smartphone users in India are the target of a new malware campaign that employs social engineering lures to install fraudulent apps that are capable of harvesting sensitive data. "Using social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, attackers are sending messages designed to lure users into installing a malicious app on their mobile device by impersonating legitimate organizations, such as banks, government services, and utilities," Microsoft threat intelligence researchers Abhishek Pustakala, Harshita Tripathi, and Shivang Desai  said  in a Monday analysis. The ultimate goal of the operation is to capture banking details, payment card information, account credentials, and other personal data. The attack chains involve sharing malicious APK files via social media messages sent on WhatsApp and Telegram by falsely presenting them as banking apps and inducing a sense of urgency by claiming that the targets' bank accounts will be blocked unless they update their permanent a

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new dropper-as-a-service (DaaS) for Android called  SecuriDropper  that bypasses new security restrictions imposed by Google and delivers the malware. Dropper malware on Android is designed to function as a conduit to install a payload on a compromised device, making it a lucrative business model for threat actors, who can advertise the capabilities to other criminal groups. What's more, doing so also allows adversaries to separate the development and execution of an attack from the installation of the malware. "Droppers and the actors behind them are in a constant state of evolution as they strive to outwit evolving security measures," Dutch cybersecurity firm ThreatFabric  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. One such security measure introduced by Google with Android 13 is what's called the Restricted Settings, which prevents sideloaded applications from obtaining Accessibility and Notification Listener

Google is rolling out a new banner to highlight the "Independent security review" badge in the Play Store's Data safety section for Android VPN apps that have undergone a Mobile Application Security Assessment ( MASA ) audit. "We've launched this banner beginning with VPN apps due to the sensitive and significant amount of user data these apps handle," Nataliya Stanetsky of the Android Security and Privacy Team  said . MASA allows developers to have their apps independently validated against a global security standard such as the Mobile Application Security Verification Standard ( MASVS ), thereby providing more transparency and enabling users to make informed choices prior to downloading them. The efforts are part of Google's broader push to make the Data safety section a  one-stop   shop  that presents a "unified view of app safety," offering details about the kind of data that's being collected, for what purpose, and if it's be

Google has announced an update to its Play Protect with support for real-time scanning at the code level to tackle novel malicious apps prior to downloading and installing them on Android devices. "Google Play Protect will now recommend a real-time app scan when installing apps that have never been scanned before to help detect emerging threats," the tech giant  said . Google Play Protect is a  built-in, free threat detection service  that scans Android devices for any potentially harmful apps downloaded from the Play Store as well as other external sources. In extreme cases, an app may be blocked from being installed. The check expands on previous existing protections that alerted users when it identified an app known to be malicious from existing scanning intelligence or was identified as suspicious from heuristics gathered via on-device machine learning. With the latest safeguards, important signals from the app are extracted and sent to the Play Protect backend infr

The Android banking trojan known as  SpyNote  has been dissected to reveal its diverse information-gathering features. Typically spread via SMS phishing campaigns, attack chains involving the spyware trick potential victims into installing the app by clicking on the embedded link, according to F-Secure. Besides requesting invasive permissions to access call logs, camera, SMS messages, and external storage, SpyNote is known for hiding its presence from the Android home screen and the  Recents screen  in a bid to make it difficult to avoid detection. "The SpyNote malware app can be launched via an external trigger," F-Secure researcher Amit Tambe  said  in an analysis published last week. "Upon receiving the intent, the malware app launches the main activity." But most importantly, it seeks accessibility permissions, subsequently leveraging it to grant itself additional permissions to record audio and phone calls, log keystrokes, as well as capture screenshots o

An ad fraud botnet dubbed  PEACHPIT  leveraged an army of hundreds of thousands of Android and iOS devices to generate illicit profits for the threat actors behind the scheme. The botnet is part of a larger China-based operation codenamed  BADBOX , which also entails selling off-brand mobile and connected TV (CTV) devices on popular online retailers and resale sites that are backdoored with an  Android malware strain  called  Triada . "The PEACHPIT botnet's conglomerate of associated apps were found in 227 countries and territories, with an estimated peak of 121,000 devices a day on Android and 159,000 devices a day on iOS," HUMAN  said . The infections are said to have been realized through a collection of 39 apps that were installed more than 15 million times. Devices fitted with the BADBOX malware allowed the operators to steal sensitive data, create residential proxy exit peers, and commit ad fraud through the bogus apps. It's currently not clear how the And

A new Android banking trojan named GoldDigger has been found targeting several financial applications with an aim to siphon victims' funds and backdoor infected devices. "The malware targets more than 50 Vietnamese banking, e-wallet and crypto wallet applications," Group-IB  said . "There are indications that this threat might be poised to extend its reach across the wider APAC region and to Spanish-speaking countries." The malware was  first detected  by the Singapore-headquartered company in August 2023, although there is evidence to suggest that it has been active since June 2023. While the exact scale of the infections is currently not known, the malicious apps have been found to impersonate a Vietnamese government portal and an energy company to request intrusive permissions to meet its data-gathering goals. This primarily includes  abusing   Android's accessibility services , which is intended to assist users with disabilities to use the apps, in

New findings have identified connections between an Android spyware called DragonEgg and another sophisticated modular iOS surveillanceware tool named LightSpy . DragonEgg , alongside WyrmSpy (aka AndroidControl), was  first disclosed  by Lookout in July 2023 as a strain of malware capable of gathering sensitive data from Android devices. It was attributed to the Chinese nation-state group APT41. On the other hand, details about LightSpy came to light in March 2020 as part of a campaign dubbed  Operation Poisoned News  in which Apple iPhone users in Hong Kong were targeted with watering hole attacks to install the spyware. Now, according to Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric, DragonEgg attack chains involve the use of a trojanized Telegram app that's designed to download a second-stage payload (smallmload.jar), which, in turn, is configured to download a third component codenamed Core. Further analysis of the artifacts has revealed that the Android variant of the implan

Tibetan, Uyghur, and Taiwanese individuals and organizations are the targets of a persistent campaign orchestrated by a threat actor codenamed  EvilBamboo  to gather sensitive information. "The attacker has created fake Tibetan websites, along with social media profiles, likely used to deploy browser-based exploits against targeted users," Volexity security researchers Callum Roxan, Paul Rascagneres, and Thomas Lancaster said in a report published last week. "Partly through impersonating existing popular communities, the attacker has built communities on online platforms, such as Telegram, to aid in distribution of their malware." EvilBamboo, formerly tracked by the cybersecurity firm under the name Evil Eye, has been linked to multiple attack waves  since at least 2019 , with the threat actor leveraging watering hole attacks to deliver spyware targeting Android and iOS devices. It's also known as Earth Empusa and POISON CARP. The intrusions directed agai

A new analysis of the Android banking trojan known as Hook has revealed that it's based on its predecessor called ERMAC. "The ERMAC source code was used as a base for Hook," NCC Group security researchers Joshua Kamp and Alberto Segura  said  in a technical analysis published last week. "All commands (30 in total) that the malware operator can send to a device infected with ERMAC malware, also exist in Hook. The code implementation for these commands is nearly identical." Hook was  first documented  by ThreatFabric in January 2023, describing it as a " ERMAC  fork" that's offered for sale for $7,000 per month. Both the strains are the work of a malware author called DukeEugene. That said, Hook expands on ERMAC's functionalities with more capabilities, supporting as many as 38 additional commands when compared to the latter. ERMAC's core features are designed to send SMS messages, display a phishing window on top of a legitimate app, e

Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that's designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. According to Kaspersky security researcher Igor Golovin, the apps come with  nefarious features  to capture and exfiltrate names, user IDs, contacts, phone numbers, and chat messages to an actor-controlled server. The activity has been codenamed  Evil Telegram  by the Russian cybersecurity company. The apps have been collectively downloaded millions of times before they were taken down by Google. Their details are as follows - 電報,紙飛機-TG繁體中文版 or 電報,小飛機-TG繁體中文版 (org.telegram.messenger.wab) - 10 million+ downloads TG繁體中文版-電報,紙飛機 (org.telegram.messenger.wab) - 50,000+ downloads 电报,纸飞机-TG简体中文版 (org.telegram.messenger.wob) - 50,000+ downloads 电报,纸飞机-TG简体中文版 (org.tgcn.messenger.wob) - 10,000+ downloads ئۇيغۇر تىلى TG - تېلېگرامما (org.telegram.messenger.wcb) - 100+ downloads The last app on the list tran

A  Mirai botnet  variant called  Pandora  has been observed infiltrating inexpensive Android-based TV sets and TV boxes and using them as part of a botnet to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Doctor Web said the compromises are likely to occur either during malicious firmware updates or when applications for viewing pirated video content are installed. "It is likely that this update has been made available for download from a number of websites, as it is signed with publicly available Android Open Source Project test keys," the Russian company  said  in an analysis published Wednesday. "The service that runs the backdoor is included in boot.img," enabling it to persist between system restarts. In the alternative distribution methods, it's suspected that users are tricked into installing applications for streaming pirated movies and TV shows through websites that mainly single out Spanish-speaking users. The list of apps is as follows -

Google has rolled out monthly security patches for Android to address a number of flaws, including a zero-day bug that it said may have been exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2023-35674 , the high-severity vulnerability is described as a case of privilege escalation impacting the  Android Framework . "There are indications that CVE-2023-35674 may be under limited, targeted exploitation," the company  said  in its Android Security Bulletin for September 2023 without delving into additional specifics. The update also addresses three other privilege escalation flaws in Framework, with the search giant noting that the most severe of these issues "could lead to local escalation of privilege with no additional execution privileges needed" sans any user interaction. Google said it has further plugged a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could lead to remote code execution without requiring interaction on the part of the victim. "The severity assessment is

A previously undocumented Android banking trojan dubbed  MMRat  has been observed targeting mobile users in Southeast Asia since late June 2023 to remotely commandeer the devices and perform financial fraud. "The malware, named after its distinctive package name com.mm.user, can capture user input and screen content, and can also remotely control victim devices through various techniques, enabling its operators to carry out bank fraud on the victim's device," Trend Micro  said . What makes MMRat stand apart from others of its kind is the use of a customized command-and-control (C2) protocol based on protocol buffers (aka  protobuf ) to efficiently transfer large volumes of data from compromised handsets, demonstrating the growing sophistication of Android malware. Possible targets based on the language used in the phishing pages include Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines. The entry point of the attacks is a network of phishing sites that mimic offici

A Syrian threat actor named  EVLF  has been outed as the creator of malware families CypherRAT and CraxsRAT. "These RATs are designed to allow an attacker to remotely perform real-time actions and control the victim device's camera, location, and microphone," Cybersecurity firm Cyfirma  said  in a report published last week. CypherRAT and CraxsRAT are said to be offered to other cybercriminals as part of a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) scheme. As many as 100 unique threat actors are estimated to have purchased the twin tools on a lifetime license over the past three years. EVLF is said to be operating a web shop to advertise their warez since at least September 2022. CraxsRAT is billed as an Android trojan that enables a threat actor to remote control an infected device from a Windows computer, with the developer consistently releasing new updates based on feedback from the customers. The malicious package is generated using a builder, which comes with options to cus

Threat actors are using Android Package (APK) files with unknown or unsupported compression methods to elude malware analysis. That's according to findings from Zimperium, which found 3,300 artifacts leveraging such compression algorithms in the wild. 71 of the identified samples can be loaded on the operating system without any problems. There is no evidence that the apps were available on the Google Play Store at any point in time, indicating that the apps were distributed through other means, typically via untrusted app stores or social engineering to trick the victims into sideloading them. The APK files use "a technique that limits the possibility of decompiling the application for a large number of tools, reducing the possibilities of being analyzed," security researcher Fernando Ortega  said . "In order to do that, the APK (which is in essence a ZIP file), is using an unsupported decompression method." The advantage of such an approach is its abilit