Android smartphone device manufacturer Samsung has a patch for a flaw used by commercial surveillance hackers to implant malware in the United Arab Emirates. Security researchers at Google and Amnesty International in March reported an exploit chain apparently developed by Barcelona spyware vendor Variston to deploy a surveillance malware to devices located in the UAE….

Researchers found Android malware masquerading as a legitimate application available and downloaded over 620,000 times from the Google Play store. The apps have been active since 2022, posing as legitimate photo-editing apps, camera editors and smartphone wallpaper packs. Researchers found 11 legitimate applications infected with the malware, dubbed Fleckpe by Kaspersky, which have been since…

Google’s Android security bulletin for April 2023 describes 26 vulnerabilities resolved in the Framework and System components as part of the 2023-04-01 security patch level. Most of these are high-severity flaws leading to elevation of privilege (EoP) or information disclosure. Two of the 16 issues addressed in System, however, are critical-severity RCE bugs, tracked as…

Several commercial spyware vendors developed and used zero-day exploits against iOS and Android users last year. However, their exploit chains also relied on known vulnerabilities to work, highlighting the importance of both users and device manufacturers to speed up the adoption of security patches. “The zero-day exploits were used alongside n-day exploits and took advantage…

The author of the Xenomorph Android malware, the Hadoken Security Group, continues to improve their malicious code. In February 2022, researchers from ThreatFabric first spotted the Xenomorph malware, which was distributed via the official Google Play Store reaching over 50,000 installations. The banking Trojan was used to target 56 European banks and steal sensitive information…

A version of the Shein shopping application in the Google Play store with more than 100 million downloads was unnecessarily accessing Android-device clipboard contents, creating a potential security threat, according to Microsoft. The software giant said in a blog post from Microsoft Threat Intelligence that it asked Shein to remove the feature from its Android…

Since 2011, Hinchy has owned and operated numerous companies, including the 16 investigated by the New York OAG, for selling and promoting spyware targeting Android and iOS devices, including Auto Forward, Easy Spy, DDI Utilities, Highster Mobile, PhoneSpector, Surepoint, and TurboSpy. Once installed on victim devices, the spyware would collect and exfiltrate data such as…

The initiative was initially announced in February, with the developer preview version of the feature being released in May. The Privacy Sandbox on Android is meant to limit the sharing of user data and prevent cross-app identifiers such as advertising IDs, while supporting developers and businesses that are targeting mobile devices. In May, the internet…

Tracked as CVE-2022-20465, the security bug was resolved as part of the November 2022 Android patches, and could have allowed an attacker with physical access to a device to unlock it in minutes. The issue, which Schutz accidentally discovered, could allow an attacker to unlock an Android phone by triggering the SIM PIN reset mechanism,…