no list of apps anywhere
Jup. It just says that “the malware was disguised as PDF and QR code readers”.
Not helpful, Mashable. Not helpful at all.
In fairness to Mashable, this isn’t their fault. The people that made the report didn’t make the list public.
Then why is this the subtitle:
The apps identified have since been removed from Google Play, but make sure you didn’t install one.
These articles are useless without a damn list
Am I just missing it, or is there no list of of these infected apps on the posted article or the reference the article links to. To me, that is the most important information.
It is about halfway down the article, but you have to dodge a few adds to get to that part.
“The two apps mentioned in the report were called “PDF Reader and File Manager” by Tsarka Watchfaces and “QR Reader and File Manager” by risovanul.”
Aren’t apps on android hermetically sealed from other apps and malware. How could this be achieved ?
Since the other reply was unhelpful: apps are supposed to have limited privileges and isolation from each other, yes… But the whole point of malware like this is that they figure out ways to break those restrictions and get escalated privileged.
You can get more technical detail from reading the report, in this case it looks like the app does not contain malware, but instead requests an update after install that contains the bad code and then breaks the app limitations and scans for the target banking applications and copies the security certificates.
For a real answer here’s the Zscaler blog write up: https://www.zscaler.com/blogs/security-research/technical-analysis-anatsa-campaigns-android-banking-malware-active-google
It looks like they are doing it after app install with a malicious patch. This patch asks for SMS and accessibility access to gain privileges necessary to get into the banking apps. I haven’t thoroughly read it but just looking at the attack chain that’s what I gleaned.
As an Android developer that comment makes me sad. Then I remind myself that Lemmy is full of people who migrated from Reddit.
Why? They’re absolutely right. The article doesn’t say anything about a root exploit or phishing either so were left wondering…
He’s being condescending because he believes as a developer nothing is actually fully secure. If I spend 100 hours building and securing something, that’s not going to stack up very favorably vs the 1,000’s or even 1,000,000’s of hours attackers and communities can spend trying to break my security layers.
Basically, he’s a dick in how he answered the question, but the truth every software engineer learns, is that there is no fully secure system. There’s always an angle/attack vector you didn’t think of and secure.
Android as a system has too many moving parts. You not only have to worry about various device manufacturers compiling their own versions of AOSP, you have to worry about how manufacturers package unremovable apps like facebook, candy crush, etc.
The backdoor is actually the front door… and it is app vendors who are actually the customers… not the phone owners.
The main reason smartphones took off is that business people were salivating at an always on, always listening device with 10+ sensors collecting data on this whole world. And we pay for the privilege.
Android has to be designed to collect data and show you ads. Is it really surprising that security here is just security against free access to this data from outsiders… and not caring about your security?
And this right here is why you use open source apps.
This only would work if you check every line of source code, even the dependencies and build chain, and then build it yourself. See xz utils backdoor or heartbleed, etc.
The whole point is that at some point somebody can check, and you can have a higher level of trust in that than proprietary software.
And if someone does something like this then it has to be disguised as an innocuous bug, like heartbleed, they can’t just install full on malware.
It’s a different beast entirely.
If we are talking about bigger projects with hundreds of thousands or millions of downloads, than this may be true. But smal scale projects have so few people actively looking through them that even to automatic scan done by the playstore has a higher chance of catching malware. It doesn’t even have to be bad intent, two years ago there was a virus propagating trough the Java class files in minecraft mods which reached the PCs of quite a few devs before it was caught.
I don’t dislike FOSS, a lot of the apps I use come straight from github, but all this talk about them beeing constantly monitored by third parties is just wishful thinking.
The thing is we only know about these vulnerabilities in such great detail because the projects are open source. God knows what kund of vulnerabilities are hidden in closed source software.
Yes, but we don’t know what we don’t know. There are many problems like that in open source too, and even if we can look nobody does.
Therefore I find it problematic to say that just because you use open source programs you’re safe like the parent tried to.
Yes, of course. However, when it’s open source, at least somebody is capable of checking those things, even if it is not you. Somebody in the community is capable of doing so.
Yes, that is true, but let’s not pretend that just because some one is theoretically able to, that all source code is constantly monitored by 3rd parties.
check every line … yourself.
🚩🚩🚩
A very classic lie, disinformation, used to spread anti-libre software. Anti-libre software bans us, not only me but everyone else, from removing malicious source code.
Very disingenuous of you to fight a strawman and proclaim victory by claiming that I said things which I never did. But if that’s what floats your boat. But for everyone else, try to find any mention of anti-libre software in the original claim.
If you download apps from fdroid, at the very least you can be sure that the binary is 100% generated from the provided source code, the devs can’t pull a switcheroo like submitting an altered version of app (e.g. inserting malware) that doesn’t match the published source code.
Exactly. Neckbeards love to pretend open source magically has no security vulnerabilities, and that the ability to inspect the source means you’ll never install anything nefarious.
I expect all of them to have read the source for every single package they’ve ever installed. Oh and the Linux source too, of course
You’re right, I should clarify better. When I say open source, what I mean is totally open and totally free to contribute to, like the MIT or patchy licenses. Source viewable is a whole different can of worms and not what I mean, so I should be more specific in future.
