Security News > 2020 > March > Android Surveillance Campaign Leverages COVID-19 Crisis
Amid numerous malicious attacks leveraging the current COVID-19 coronavirus crisis, security researchers have discovered an Android surveillance campaign targeting users in Libya.
One of the COVID-19-themed attacks appears to be part of a larger mobile surveillance campaign operating out of Libya and targeting Libyan individuals, Lookout reveals.
Pivoting off the C&C domain, Lookout's researchers identified 30 unique APKs sharing infrastructure apparently used in a surveillance campaign ongoing since at least April 2019.
The researchers managed to link the campaign to Libya through the malicious applications and the C&C infrastructure, and they note that "This appears to be a regionally targeted surveillance effort." However, there is no evidence to suggest that this is a state-sponsored campaign, although the surveillanceware employed has been used by nation states in the Middle East in the past.
"This surveillance campaign highlights how in times of crisis, our innate need to seek out information can be used against us for malicious ends. Furthermore, the commercialization of"off-the-shelf" spyware kits makes it fairly easy for these malicious actors to spin up these bespoke campaigns almost as quickly as a crisis like COVID-19 takes hold," Lookout concludes.