android apps | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

What if hackers could take an existing legitimate app or update with a valid digital signature, and modify it in order to use it as a malicious Trojan to access everything on your Android phone or tablet? Last week, researchers from Bluebox Security announced that the Android operating system has been vulnerable to hackers for the past four years, allowing them to modify or manipulate any legitimate application and enabling them to transform it into a Trojan programme. The bug hasn't, so far, been spotted being exploited in the wild, but technical details and a proof-of-concept exploit have been published for a recently announced publicly by Pau Oliva Fora, a mobile security engineer at security firm ViaForensics. Jeff Forristal of Bluebox security stated that the security hole as been around since at least Android 1.6, and it could affect all Android devices i.e. around 900 million devices could be affected by hackers. CyanogenMod , a popular open source d

A new piece of sophisticated Android malware has been discovered by security researchers at Kaspersky Labs . Dubbed as Backdoor . AndroidOS . Obad . a , it is the most sophisticated piece of Android malware ever seen. It exploits multiple vulnerabilities , blocks uninstall attempts, attempts to gain root access, and can execute a host of remote commands. It include complex obfuscation techniques that complicated analysis of the code, and the use of a previously unknown vulnerability in Android that allowed it to take control of and maintain a foothold on infected Android devices . There are two previously unknown Android vulnerabilities exploited by Obad . It can gain administrator privileges, making it virtually impossible for a user to delete it off a device. Another flaw in the Android OS relates to the processing of the AndroidManifest.xml file. This file exists in every Android application and is used to describe the application's structure, define its laun

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Google just released a new Play Store version 4.0.27 that, contains only very minor tweaks and Google has changed the rules of its Google Play Store to put an end to the practice of developers updating their apps through their own means rather than the official Google Play channel. Shortly before the Facebook Home launch, some users noticed a new version of Facebook was available on their device, but it wasn't through the Play Store. Instead, the update came directly through the app, bypassing the Store altogether. Under the " Dangerous Products " section of the Google Play developer policies, Google now states that " an app downloaded from Google Play may not modify, replace or update its own APK binary code using any method other than Google Play's update mechanism. " Essentially this means that once an app is downloaded by an Android user it cannot contact home base and auto-update its own operating code. Instead, it has to use the off

More than 50 millions of Smartphone users worldwide are facing a risk posed by a critical flaw in Viber app. The security company Bkav announced that it has found a way to gain full access to Android phones using the popular Viber messaging app. Unlike the Samsung lockscreen issue we reported on earlier, this attack doesn't take any fancy finger work. Instead, all it needs is two phones, both running Viber, and a phone number. " The way Viber handles to popup its messages on smartphones' lock screen is unusual, resulting in its failure to control programming logic, causing the flaw to appear, " said Mr. Nguyen Minh Duc, Director of Bkav's Security Division. Steps to exploit: Send Viber message to victim Combine actions on Viber message popups with tricks like using victim's notification bar, sending other Viber messages, etc. to make Viber keyboard appear Once Viber keyboard has appeared, to fully access the device, create misse

It appears as if another malware scare has come to Android . Lookout Security said on Friday that it has discovered a new family of malware called BadNews .  Malware that avoided detection and made its way onto the Google Play store has been downloaded around 9 million times by users from all over the world. The company uncovered the malware in 32 applications listed by four different developer accounts on Google Play. Google was notified and the company removed the affected apps and killed the developer accounts associated with them. In their report, firm describes the malware: " BadNews masquerades as an innocent, if somewhat aggressive advertising network. This is one of the first times that we've seen a malicious distribution network clearly posing as an ad network. Because it's challenging to get malicious bad code into Google play, the authors of Badnews created a malicious advertising network, as a front, that would push malware out to infected devices

It is a terrifying prospect, a hack that allows an attacker to take control of plane navigation and cockpit systems has been revealed at a security conference in Europe. This was demonstrated by Hugo Teso , a researcher at security consultancy N.Runs in Germany who's also a commercial airline pilot. He explained that by building an exploit framework called Simon and a complimentary Android app that delivers attack messages, he could manipulate a plane's path as he saw fit. " You can use this system to modify approximately everything related to the navigation of the plane ," Teso told reporters. Teso found he was able to eavesdrop on the system's communications over its 1MBps link, as well as blocking information and injecting data into link.  It took three years of hunting down holes in standard systems to work out how he could use radio signals to send his own navigation commands to a plane's control system, using publicly available Flight Management System (FMS)

Tibetan and Uyghur activists are once again targeted with a new malware, specially designed for Android devices. This is the first documented attack that targets Android smartphones . Security researchers at Kaspersky say they've  found a targeted malware attack on Android phones that seems to come from China. The attack relied heavily on social engineering, a kind of verbal manipulation, to hack into their targets' devices. Malware seeks to steal information like contacts, call logs, and SMS of people who work in the field of human rights. Kaspersky has identified the Trojan as " Chuli ," after a command function that shows up prior to posting stolen data to the command-and-control server at the URL: hxxp://64.78.161.133/*victims's_cell_phone_number*/process.php. On March 24, the attackers infiltrated the email account of a high-profile Tibetan activist, and used that account to send a spear-phishing email to their contacts list. Once the victim