Displaying items by tag: Mobile Security

Banking malware for mobile devices is on the rise thanks to the ubiquitous use of mobile apps for personal financial tracking and transactions. This move was almost certain to attract threat actors like a moth to a porchlight. When given the gloriously poor state of mobile anti-malware and protection it is no wonder there are so many flavors of this popping up. What is even more disappointing, is the fact that we are seeing the malware packages pushed out through legitimate app stores.

The rise of the smart device meant that more and more people were going to be using these for more than just communication. Mobile banking, mobile home automation, mobile car monitoring, you name it, there is probably an app for it. With this new and powerful accessibility there comes risk. Attackers know that mobile security is not exactly where it should be, and that people are more trusting on their phones than they might be on their laptops and desktops (maybe). We also have the issue with how mobile apps access the information they have permissions to and display it to the user. To call mobile device security a mess would be a gross understatement.

WhatsApp is one of a group of relatively secure messaging services available to both iPhone and Android users. WhatsApp states that it supports full end-to-end encryption, secure deletion of messages (by the sender and receiver) as well as the option to setup disappearing messages. It can also be set to block screen shots of chats which is nice when you want to keep your conversation private.

Scammers and threat groups are nothing if not creative. They have time and quite a bit of talent on their hands to figure out ways around security features and gateways to get what they want. Take the recent discovery of Dark Hearing; this lovely mobile malware/scam gem was discovered by Zimnperium and was inserted into several seemingly benign apps. These apps were pushed to Google Play where they were downloaded by hundreds of millions of people.

Mobile device security is not where is should be. There is just no way around this fact. The vas majority of people simple download and install an app on their phone or tablet thinking that they are not going to get something nasty. They never review the permissions that new app is asking for or what those permissions might allow it to do. Now it seems that clever threat actors have slipped a malware into a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) App.

One of the things that Apple has always held over Google’s head is the amount of malware that is present in the Google Play Store. It seems that each year the number and complexity of the malware uploaded to the Play Store grows. Much of this is because the Play Store is not as restrictive as the App Store. Apple’s walled garden has protected them from a storm of mobile malware for a long time… well there was that one attempt by Charlie Miller a while ago. Back then Miller used his developer account to submit an app that was actually malware. It got Miller banned from the Apple Developer club which made the news for a little while.

Kido'z announced today that they will be bringing their popular kid-friendly media browser to the Android devices. The app allows kids to view and use only programs they are permitted and if parents are not into today’s mobile devices, Kido'z comes with a directory of pre-approved child safe apps so they can choose it quite easily. As smartphones and tablets are getting more popular and very simple to use, at least when you compare them to PCs, it completely normal that kids want to play on them too. So it was just a matter of time before someone brought this kind of software to mobile devices.

Originally this article was to be a stand alone item to show how the mobile world is catchin up to the desktop. However, now that we have the news of domains being seized that offered pirated versions of Mobile Apps it seems there is certainly a new push to secure this highly profitable sector in play. The company that produced the report (Arxan) is not associated with this push, but timing of the publication of the report is very interesting. So let's take a look at how sad the state of the mobile app market is in terms of securing apps from hacking.

The mobile world has exploded in much the same way that the PC world exploded back in the mid to late 90s. It was a time when everyone was selling cheap computers for the masses. Unfortunately the hardware and software that was being used by everyone was also very open to attack. The thought of malware protection, hardened operating systems and edge protection (in the form of a firewall) were still very new in the consumer market. These things were also still in their infancy in much of the corporate market. Now we are seeing the same thing happening in the mobile world. The introduction of the smart phone and the mobile “app” have created a new offshoot which is still very immature and which due to its rapid growth and perceived security has become a target for malware and piracy, just like the PC did in the 90s.

As we have told all of you before no system is secure. We have watched now as Android malware writers are using social engineering to mass-market spam and now we are seeing the first proof of concept of a method to “hack” Apple’s In-App purchase feature. We mentioned in our recent coverage of the Anrdoid.Dialup malware that this feature was not only vulnerable, but also could be used as a vector for attack and the installation of other malware.