Android security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Google has announced that it's piloting a new security initiative that automatically blocks sideloading of potentially unsafe Android apps in India, after similar tests in Singapore, Thailand, and Brazil. The enhanced fraud protection feature aims to keep users safe when they attempt to install malicious apps from sources other than the Google Play Store, such as web browsers, messaging apps, and file managers. The program, which was first launched in Singapore earlier this February, has already blocked nearly 900,000 high-risk installations in the Southeast Asian nation, the tech giant said. "This enhanced fraud protection will analyze and automatically block the installation of apps that may use sensitive permissions frequently abused for financial fraud," Eugene Liderman, director of mobile security strategy at Google, said . It works by examining the permissions declared by a third-party app in real-time and checking for permissions that are typically abused by

Mobile users in Brazil are the target of a new malware campaign that delivers a new Android banking trojan named Rocinante. "This malware family is capable of performing keylogging using the Accessibility Service, and is also able to steal PII from its victims using phishing screens posing as different banks," Dutch security company ThreatFabric said . "Finally, it can use all this exfiltrated information to perform device takeover (DTO) of the device, by leveraging the accessibility service privileges to achieve full remote access on the infected device." Some of the prominent targets of the malware include financial institutions such as Itaú Shop, Santander, with the phony apps masquerading as Bradesco Prime and Correios Celular, among others - Livelo Pontos (com.resgatelivelo.cash) Correios Recarga (com.correiosrecarga.android) Bradesco Prime (com.resgatelivelo.cash) Módulo de Segurança (com.viberotion1414.app) Source code analysis of the malware has

For years, securing a company's systems was synonymous with securing its "perimeter." There was what was safe "inside" and the unsafe outside world. We built sturdy firewalls and deployed sophisticated detection systems, confident that keeping the barbarians outside the walls kept our data and systems safe. The problem is that we no longer operate within the confines of physical on-prem installations and controlled networks. Data and applications now reside in distributed cloud environments and data centers, accessed by users and devices connecting from anywhere on the planet. The walls have crumbled, and the perimeter has dissolved, opening the door to a new battlefield: identity . Identity is at the center of what the industry has praised as the new gold standard of enterprise security: "zero trust." In this paradigm, explicit trust becomes mandatory for any interactions between systems, and no implicit trust shall subsist. Every access request, regardless of its origin,

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new Android remote access trojan (RAT) called BingoMod that not only performs fraudulent money transfers from the compromised devices but also wipes them in an attempt to erase traces of the malware. Italian cybersecurity firm Cleafy, which discovered the RAT towards the end of May 2024, said the malware is under active development. It attributed the Android trojan to a likely Romanian-speaking threat actor owing to the presence of Romanian language comments in the source code associated with early versions. "BingoMod belongs to the modern RAT generation of mobile malware, as its remote access capabilities allow threat actors (TAs) to conduct Account Takeover (ATO) directly from the infected device, thus exploiting the on-device fraud (ODF) technique," researchers Alessandro Strino and Simone Mattia said . It's worth mentioning here that this technique has been observed in other Android banking trojans, such as Medusa (aka

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an updated version of an Android banking trojan called Medusa that has been used to target users in Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S. The new fraud campaigns, observed in May 2024 and active since July 2023, manifested through five different botnets operated by various affiliates, cybersecurity firm Cleafy said in an analysis published last week. The new Medusa samples feature a "lightweight permission set and new features, such as the ability to display a full-screen overlay and remotely uninstall applications," security researchers Simone Mattia and Federico Valentini said. Medusa, also known as TangleBot, is a sophisticated Android malware first discovered in July 2020 targeting financial entities in Turkey. It comes with capabilities to read SMS messages, log keystrokes, capture screenshots, record calls, share the device screen in real-time, and perform unauthorized fund transfers using overlay a

Microsoft has warned about a new strain of mobile ransomware that takes advantage of incoming call notifications and Android's Home button to lock the device behind a ransom note. The findings concern a variant of a known Android ransomware family dubbed "MalLocker.B" which has now resurfaced with new techniques, including a novel means to deliver the ransom demand on infected devices as well as an obfuscation mechanism to evade security solutions. The development comes amid a huge surge in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure across sectors, with a 50% increase in the daily average of ransomware attacks in the last three months compared to the first half of the year, and cybercriminals increasingly incorporating double extortion in their playbook. MalLocker has been known for being hosted on malicious websites and circulated on online forums using various social engineering lures by masquerading as popular apps, cracked games, or video players. Pre

A hacking group known for its attacks in the Middle East, at least since 2017, has recently been found impersonating legitimate messaging apps such as Telegram and Threema to infect Android devices with a new, previously undocumented malware. "Compared to the versions documented in 2017, Android/SpyC23.A has extended spying functionality, including reading notifications from messaging apps, call recording and screen recording, and new stealth features, such as dismissing notifications from built-in Android security apps," cybersecurity firm ESET  said  in a Wednesday analysis. First detailed by Qihoo 360 in 2017 under the moniker  Two-tailed Scorpion (aka APT-C-23 or Desert Falcon), the mobile malware has been deemed "surveillanceware" for its abilities to spy on the devices of targeted individuals, exfiltrating call logs, contacts, location, messages, photos, and other sensitive documents in the process. In 2018, Symantec discovered a  newer variant  of the c

Dear Android users, if you use the Firefox web browser on your smartphones, make sure it has been updated to version 80 or the latest available version on the Google Play Store. ESET security researcher Lukas Stefanko yesterday tweeted an alert demonstrating the exploitation of a recently disclosed high-risk remote command execution vulnerability affecting the Firefox app for Android. Discovered originally by Australian security researcher Chris Moberly , the vulnerability resides in the SSDP engine of the browser that can be exploited by an attacker to target Android smartphones connected to the same Wi-Fi network as the attacker, with Firefox app installed. SSDP, stands for Simple Service Discovery Protocol, is a UDP based protocol that is a part of UPnP for finding other devices on a network. In Android, Firefox periodically sends out SSDP discovery messages to other devices connected to the same network, looking for second-screen devices to cast. Any device on the local netwo

After a long wait and months of beta testing, Google last week finally released Android 11 , the latest version of the Android mobile operating system—with features offering billions of its users more control over their data security and privacy. Android security is always a hot topic and almost always for the wrong reason, including Google's failure to prevent malicious apps from being distributed through the Play Store, over-claim of permissions by apps, and privacy leakages. Though most of such issues can be avoided as long as users take advantage of already available features and a little common sense, most users are still not aware of or following basic security practices. According to Google's latest announcement, the latest Android 11 OS includes a few new built-in measures designed to keep users' data secure by default, increase transparency, and offer better control. Instead of diving deep into smaller or more extensive changes, we have summarized some critica

Following vulnerability disclosure in the Mitron app , another viral TikTok clone in India has now been found vulnerable to a critical but easy-to-exploit authentication bypass vulnerability, allowing anyone to hijack any user account and tamper with their information, content, and even upload unauthorized videos. The Indian video sharing app, called Chingari, is available for Android and iOS smartphones through official app stores, designed to let users record short-form videos, catch up on the news, and connect with other users via a direct message feature. Originally launched in November 2018, Chingari has witnessed a huge surge in popularity over the past few days in the wake of India's ban on Chinese-owned apps late last month, crossing 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store in under a month. The Indian government recently banned 59 apps and services , including ByteDance's TikTok, Alibaba Group's UC Browser and UC News, and Tencent's WeChat over priv

Cybersecurity researchers took the wraps off yet another instance of Android malware hidden under the guise of legitimate applications to stealthily subscribe unsuspecting users for premium services without their knowledge. In a report published by Check Point research today, the malware — infamously called Joker (or Bread) — has found another trick to bypass Google's Play Store protections: obfuscate the malicious DEX executable inside the application as Base64 encoded strings, which are then decoded and loaded on the compromised device. Following responsible disclosure by Check Point researchers, the 11 apps ( list and hashes here ) in question were removed by Google from the Play Store on April 30, 2020. "The Joker malware is tricky to detect, despite Google's investment in adding Play Store protections," said Check Point 's Aviran Hazum, who identified the new modus operandi of Joker malware. "Although Google removed the malicious apps from the P

Remember xHelper? A mysterious piece of Android malware that re-installs itself on infected devices even after users delete it or factory reset their devices—making it nearly impossible to remove. xHelper reportedly infected over 45,000 devices last year, and since then, cybersecurity researchers have been trying to unfold how the malware survives factory reset and how it infected so many devices in the first place. In a blog post published today, Igor Golovin, malware analyst at Kaspersky, finally solved the mystery by unveiling technical details on the persistence mechanism used by this malware, and eventually also figured out how to remove xHelper from an infected device completely. As the initial attack vector and for distribution, the malware app disguises itself as a popular cleaner and speed optimization app for smartphones — affecting mostly users in Russia (80.56%), India (3.43%), and Algeria (2.43%). "But in reality, there is nothing useful about it: af

Google today published a blog post recommending mobile app developers to encrypt data that their apps generate on the users' devices, especially when they use unprotected external storage that's prone to hijacking. Moreover, considering that there are not many reference frameworks available for the same, Google also advised using an easy-to-implement security library available as part of its Jetpack software suite. The open-sourced Jetpack Security (aka JetSec) library lets Android app developers easily read and write encrypted files by following best security practices , including storing cryptographic keys and protecting files that may contain sensitive data, API keys, OAuth tokens. To give a bit of context, Android offers developers two different ways to save app data. The first one is app-specific storage, also known as internal storage, where the files are stored in a sandboxed folder meant for a specific app's use and inaccessible to other apps on the same

Google has banned nearly 600 Android apps from the Play Store for bombarding users with disruptive ads and violating its advertising guidelines. The company categorizes disruptive ads as "ads that are displayed to users in unexpected ways, including impairing or interfering with the usability of device functions," such as a full-screen ad served when attempting to make a phone call. Although Google didn't name the specific apps in question, many of the apps — which had been installed more than 4.5 billion times — primarily targeted English-speaking users and were mainly from developers based in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and India, according to Buzzfeed News. Highlighting that malicious developers are getting "more savvy in deploying and masking disruptive ads," the company said it has developed new counter mechanisms to detect such behavior. Trouble in Google Play Store This is not the first time adware apps have been removed from the Google P

Over the past few months, hundreds of Android users have been complaining online of a new piece of mysterious malware that hides on the infected devices and can reportedly reinstall itself even after users delete it, or factory reset their devices. Dubbed Xhelper , the malware has already infected more than 45,000 Android devices in just the last six months and is continuing to spread by infecting at least 2,400 devices on an average each month, according to the latest report published today by Symantec. Here below, I have collected excerpts from some comments that affected users shared on the online forums while asking for how to remove the Xhelper Android malware: "xhelper regularly reinstalls itself, almost every day!" "the 'install apps from unknown sources' setting turns itself on." "I rebooted my phone and also wiped my phone yet the app xhelper came back." "Xhelper came pre-installed on the phone from China."

Well, there's some good news for hackers and vulnerability hunters, though terrible news for Google, Android device manufacturers, and their billions of users worldwide. The zero-day buying and selling industry has recently taken a shift towards Android operating system, offering up to $2.5 million payouts to anyone who sells 'full chain, zero-click, with persistence' Android zero-days. Just like other traditional markets, the zero-day market is also a game of supply, demand, and strategy, which suggests either the demand of Android zero-days has significantly increased or somehow Android OS is getting tougher to hack remotely, which is unlikely. In it's latest notification , Zerodium—a startup that buys zero-day exploits from hackers, and then probably sells them to law enforcement agencies and nation-sponsored spies around the world—said it's looking for hackers who can develop full chain Android exploits. The company is ready to pay up to $2.5 million for

A series of critical vulnerabilities have been discovered in Qualcomm chipsets that could allow hackers to compromise Android devices remotely just by sending malicious packets over-the-air with no user interaction. Discovered by security researchers from Tencent's Blade team, the vulnerabilities, collectively known as QualPwn , reside in the WLAN and modem firmware of Qualcomm chipsets that powers hundreds of millions of Android smartphones and tablets. According to researchers, there are primarily two critical vulnerabilities in Qualcomm chipsets and one in the Qualcomm's Linux kernel driver for Android which if chained together could allow attackers to take complete control over targeted Android devices within their Wi-Fi range. "One of the vulnerabilities allows attackers to compromise the WLAN and Modem over-the-air. The other allows attackers to compromise the Android Kernel from the WLAN chip. The full exploit chain allows attackers to compromise the Andr

Are you using an Android device? Beware! You should be more careful while playing a video on your smartphone—downloaded anywhere from the Internet or received through email. That's because, a specially crafted innocuous-looking video file can compromise your Android smartphone—thanks to a critical remote code execution vulnerability that affects over 1 billion devices running Android OS between version 7.0 and 9.0 (Nougat, Oreo, or Pie). The critical RCE vulnerability (CVE-2019-2107) in question resides in the Android media framework, which if exploited, could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a targeted device. To gain full control of the device, all an attacker needs to do is tricking the user into playing a specially crafted video file with Android's native video player application. Though Google already released a patch earlier this month to address this vulnerability, apparently millions of Android devices are still waiting for the latest A

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new piece of mobile surveillance malware believed to be developed by a Russian defense contractor that has been sanctioned for interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Dubbed Monokle , the mobile remote-access trojan has been actively targeting Android phones since at least March 2016 and is primarily being used in highly targeted attacks on a limited number of people. According to security researchers at Lookout, Monokle possesses a wide range of spying functionalities and uses advanced data exfiltration techniques, even without requiring root access to a targeted device. How Bad is Monokle Surveillance Malware In particular, the malware abuses Android accessibility services to exfiltrate data from a large number of popular third-party applications, including Google Docs, Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, WeChat, and Snapchat, by reading text displayed on a device's screen at any point in time. The malware also extracts