Android | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A botnet of more than 1.3 million Android devices, mostly TV set-top boxes, lost control of its servers in late October in a takedown led by Google. Google says  it is highly confident that device maker Videostrong intentionally put a backdoor in the boxes and sold access to criminals. They used the boxes for ad fraud and to pass other people's internet traffic through owners' home connections. The backdoor is still on the boxes, and owners cannot remove it themselves. Videostrong, based in Shenzhen, China, makes Android TV boxes and other devices under its own name and for other brands. The backdoor, called x.cpe, was built into many device models and brands over several years. Google does not believe a rogue insider or a mistake was to blame. Google used legal action to take down the domains and servers that controlled the botnet. It also took down the control domains of more than a dozen malware families loaded through the backdoor. Japan's National Police Agenc...

A flaw in Telegram for Android could be chained with two other bugs to take full control of a victim's phone through a voice call, once the victim answered, according to security startup NebuSec. The attacker needed only an ordinary Telegram account. Telegram fixed the flaw in version 12.10.4 of the app, released in late September, and NebuSec  disclosed it on October 29 . Combined with an information-leak bug, the flaw gives the attacker an escape from the Telegram app to Android, NebuSec co-founder and chief executive Eten Zou told The Hacker News. Adding an Android root exploit then gives full control of the phone, including its messages, microphone and camera. The flaw can be triggered in every version from 8.6.2 through 12.10.3, Zou said. Those versions came out between March 2022 and September 2026. The company confirmed it in private voice calls on ARM64-based phones and has no evidence so far that it directly affects Telegram's iOS and desktop apps or group ca...

Third-party Android app stores can now apply to Google for permission to install apps with one tap, without Android's usual confirmation screens, and to update them in the background. To qualify, a store must pass identity checks and send Google  its full catalog , along with every new app and update, for ongoing malware scanning. Approved stores get the features from December 1, but only on devices running Android 17 QPR2 or later in  supported countries , which do not include the US. Today, a user installing apps from a third-party store must first enable the store to install apps, then confirm each install and each update. From December 1, a store in Google's  Registered App Stores program  gets that permission automatically once it is approved, and its updates run in the background under the user's own update settings. Google  announced the program in March , alongside changes it said resolved its disputes with Epic Games. Joining is optional, and sto...

Adobe has released patches to address multiple critical security flaws in Campaign Classic that, if successfully exploited, could result in arbitrary code execution, security feature bypass, and privilege escalation. The list of eight vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2026-104351 (CVSS score: 9.9) - A code injection vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution. CVE-2026-104353 (CVSS score: 9.9) - An operating system code injection vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution. CVE-2026-105780 (CVSS score: 9.9) - An incorrect authorization vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution. CVE-2026-105489 (CVSS score: 9.9) - An SQL injection vulnerability that could lead to security feature bypass. CVE-2026-105781 (CVSS score: 9.8) - An SQL injection vulnerability that could lead to security feature bypass. CVE-2026-104350 (CVSS score: 9.3) - A reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability that could lead to privilege escalation....

Between November 2025 and March 2026, the Dutch security firm Eye Security pushed more than 2 million updates to computers it did not own to switch off a background updater that it said could have allowed an outsider to take over the machine. The updater belongs to Time4Popcorn , an abandoned copy of Popcorn Time, a free app that streamed pirated films and TV over BitTorrent. Popcorn Time was popular about a decade ago, and the original shut down in 2014, but several copies kept running under the same name. A separate, legal project that took the Popcorn Time name in early 2025 is unrelated to it. Eye Security, which monitors client networks for threats, found the updater during a routine threat hunt: a program called Updater.exe on one client's laptop kept trying to reach a web address that was no longer registered. The firm registered the address itself to see what would connect, and about 50 requests a second poured in. It later laid out the operation, which it named O...