Malicious Apps Infect 25 Million Android Devices With 'Agent Smith' Malware (phys.org) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Malicious apps from a campaign called "Agent Smith" have been downloaded to 25 million Android devices, according to new research by cyber-security firm Check Point. The apps, most of them games, were distributed through third-party app stores by a Chinese group with a legitimate business helping Chinese developers promote their apps on outside platforms. Check Point is not identifying the company, because they are working with local law enforcement. About 300,000 devices were infected in the U.S.
The malware was able to copy popular apps on the phone, including WhatsApp and the web browser Opera, inject its own malicious code and replace the original app with the weaponized version, using a vulnerability in the way Google apps are updated. The hijacked apps would still work just fine, which hid the malware from users. Armed with all the permissions users had granted to the real apps, "Agent Smith" was able to hijack other apps on the phone to display unwanted ads to users. That might not seem like a significant problem, but the same security flaws could be used to hijack banking, shopping and other sensitive apps, according to Aviran Hazum, head of Check Point's analysis and response team for mobile devices. There was also a "dormant" version of "Agent Smith" in 11 apps on the Play Store, which could have been triggered into action by a banner ad containing the keyword "infect." The apps have since been removed from the Play Store, but had over 10 million downloads.
The malware was able to copy popular apps on the phone, including WhatsApp and the web browser Opera, inject its own malicious code and replace the original app with the weaponized version, using a vulnerability in the way Google apps are updated. The hijacked apps would still work just fine, which hid the malware from users. Armed with all the permissions users had granted to the real apps, "Agent Smith" was able to hijack other apps on the phone to display unwanted ads to users. That might not seem like a significant problem, but the same security flaws could be used to hijack banking, shopping and other sensitive apps, according to Aviran Hazum, head of Check Point's analysis and response team for mobile devices. There was also a "dormant" version of "Agent Smith" in 11 apps on the Play Store, which could have been triggered into action by a banner ad containing the keyword "infect." The apps have since been removed from the Play Store, but had over 10 million downloads.
Agent Smith (Score:2)
Odd. I used to work for a company that produced cybersecurity software, and one of the programs that we used to simulate malware events during testing was called "Agent Smith".
Re: (Score:2)
Which company was that? :P
Not me (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Me, me, me... (Score:1)
The best thing about me - there's so many of me!
Something faintly ridiculous about this (Score:3)
Agent Smith slips through your defenses
Peers over shades, assesses your phone's system with an evil glance, grins
Abducts healthy apps, replaces them with infected versions
...
"Hey, Adult Depends are on sale at Wal-mart! This week only!"
It's using the 2017 Janus exploit (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, the exploit used is the Janus one described here:
https://www.guardsquare.com/en... [guardsquare.com]
From that article: [the attacker] can prepend a malicious DEX file to an APK file, without affecting its signature. The Android runtime then accepts the APK file as a valid update of a legitimate earlier version of the app. However, the Dalvik VM loads the code from the injected DEX file.
I occasionally install APKs from third-party sources such as apkmirror and apkpure (for example to downgrade to an older version if an update was broken or started spamming ads). I was trusting the fact that those APKs still had valid signatures. Hmm, what did I install before my phone got the security update?