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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

Account holders of over numerous financial institutions in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Peru are being targeted by an Android banking malware called  Gigabud RAT . "One of Gigabud RAT's unique features is that it doesn't execute any malicious actions until the user is authorized into the malicious application by a fraudster, [...] which makes it harder to detect," Group-IB researchers Pavel Naumov and Artem Grischenko  said . "Instead of using HTML overlay attacks, Gigabud RAT gathers sensitive information primarily through screen recording." Gigabud RAT was  first documented  by Cyble in January 2023 after it was spotted impersonating bank and government apps to siphon sensitive data. It's known to be active in the wild since at least July 2022. The Singapore-based company said it also identified a second variant of the malware minus the RAT capabilities. Dubbed Gigabud.Loan, it comes under the guise of a loan application that

A widely used Chinese language input app for Windows and Android has been found vulnerable to serious security flaws that could allow a malicious interloper to decipher the text typed by users. The findings from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which carried out an analysis of the encryption mechanism used in Tencent's Sogou Input Method , an app that has over 455 million monthly active users across Windows, Android, and iOS. The vulnerabilities are rooted in EncryptWall, the service's custom encryption system, allowing network eavesdroppers to extract the textual content and access sensitive data. "The Windows and Android versions of Sogou Input Method contain vulnerabilities in this encryption system, including a vulnerability to a CBC  padding oracle attack , which allow network eavesdroppers to recover the plaintext of encrypted network transmissions, revealing sensitive information including what users have typed," the researchers  said . CBC, s

Google has introduced a new security feature in Android 14 that allows IT administrators to disable support for 2G cellular networks in their managed device fleet. The search giant said it's introducing a second user setting to turn off support, at the model level, for  null-ciphered cellular connections . "The Android Security Model assumes that all networks are hostile to keep users safe from network packet injection, tampering, or eavesdropping on user traffic," Roger Piqueras Jover, Yomna Nasser, and Sudhi Herle  said . "Android does not rely on link-layer encryption to address this threat model. Instead, Android establishes that all network traffic should be end-to-end encrypted (E2EE)." 2G networks, in particular, employ weak encryption and lack mutual authentication,  rendering  them  susceptible  to over-the-air interception and traffic decryption attacks by impersonating a real 2G tower. The  threat posed by rogue cellular base stations  means th

Threat actors are leveraging a technique called versioning to evade Google Play Store's malware detections and target Android users. "Campaigns using versioning commonly target users' credentials, data, and finances," Google Cybersecurity Action Team (GCAT)  s aid  in its August 2023 Threat Horizons Report shared with The Hacker News. While versioning is not a new phenomenon, it's sneaky and hard to detect. In this method, a developer releases an initial version of an app on the Play Store that passes Google's pre-publication checks, but is later updated with a malware component. This is achieved by pushing an update from an attacker-controlled server to serve malicious code on the end user device using a method called dynamic code loading (DCL), effectively turning the app into a backdoor. Earlier this May, ESET  discovered  a screen recording app named "iRecorder - Screen Recorder" that remained innocuous for nearly a year after it was first

Various European customers of different banks are being targeted by an Android banking trojan called  SpyNote  as part of an aggressive campaign detected in June and July 2023. "The spyware is distributed through email phishing or smishing campaigns and the fraudulent activities are executed with a combination of remote access trojan (RAT) capabilities and vishing attack," Italian cybersecurity firm Cleafy  said  in a technical analysis released Monday. SpyNote , also called SpyMax, is similar to other Android banking Trojans in that it requires  Android's accessibility permissions  in order to grant itself other necessary permissions and gather sensitive data from infected devices. What makes the malware strain notable is its dual functions as spyware and perform bank fraud. The attack chains commence with a bogus SMS message urging users to install a banking app by clicking on the accompanying link, redirecting the victim to the legitimate TeamViewer QuickSupport a

A new Android malware strain called  CherryBlos  has been observed making use of optical character recognition (OCR) techniques to gather sensitive data stored in pictures. CherryBlos, per  Trend Micro , is distributed via bogus posts on social media platforms and comes with capabilities to steal cryptocurrency wallet-related credentials and act as a  clipper  to substitute wallet addresses when a victim copies a string matching a predefined format is copied to the clipboard. Once installed, the apps seek users' permissions to grant it accessibility permissions, which allows it to automatically grant itself additional permissions as required. As a defense evasion measure, users attempting to kill or uninstall the app by entering the Settings app are redirected back to the home screen. Besides displaying fake overlays on top of legitimate crypto wallet apps to steal credentials and make fraudulent fund transfers to an attacker-controlled address, CherryBlos utilizes OCR to recog