Security News
Google has agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle a privacy lawsuit filed by a coalition of attorneys general from 40 U.S. states. The settlement shows that the U.S. attorneys general discovered while investigating a 2018 Associated Press article that the search giant misled Android users and tracked their locations since at least 2014 even when they thought location tracking was disabled.
Cybersecurity researcher David Schütz accidentally found a way to bypass the lock screen on his fully patched Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 5 smartphones, enabling anyone with physical access to the device to unlock it. Exploiting the vulnerability to bypass the lock screen on Android phones is a simple five-step process that wouldn't take more than a few minutes.
Microsoft announced that the Mobile Network Protection feature is generally available to help organizations detect network weaknesses affecting Android and iOS devices running Microsoft's Defender for Endpoint enterprise endpoint security platform.Once Mobile Network Protection is toggled, MDE will provide protection and alerts when rogue Wi-Fi-related threats and certificates are detected.
According to Schütz, he stumbled on a total Android lockscreen bypass bug entirely by accident in June 2022, under real-life conditions that could easily have happened to anyone. In Schütz's case, it was the humble PIN on his SIM card that stumped him, and because SIM PINs can be as short as four digits, they're protected by a hardware lockout that limits you to three guesses at most.
A previously undocumented Android spyware tool named 'BadBazaar' has been discovered targeting ethnic and religious minorities in China, most notably the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Uyghurs, a regional Muslim minority of roughly 13 million people, have suffered extreme oppression from the central Chinese government due to their cultural deviation from typical eastern Chinese values.
Two long-running surveillance campaigns have been found targeting the Uyghur community in China and elsewhere with Android spyware tools designed to harvest sensitive information and track their whereabouts. The BadBazaar campaign, according to the security firm, is said to date as far back as late 2018 and comprise 111 unique apps that masquerade as benign video players, messengers, religious apps, and even TikTok.
According to a new report, almost half of Android-based mobile phones used by U.S. state and local government employees are running outdated versions of the operating system, exposing them to hundreds of vulnerabilities that can be leveraged for attacks. The report additionally warns of a rise in all threat metrics, including attempted phishing attacks against government employees, reliance on unmanaged mobile devices, and liability points in mission-critical networks.
A set of four Android apps released by the same developer has been discovered directing victims to malicious websites as part of an adware and information-stealing campaign. The apps, published by a developer named Mobile apps Group and currently available on the Play Store, have been collectively downloaded over one million times.
A previously undocumented Android spyware campaign has been found striking Persian-speaking individuals by masquerading as a seemingly harmless VPN application. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky is tracking the campaign under the moniker SandStrike.
At the time of publishing, the apps are still present on Google Play under a developer account called Mobile apps Group, and have a total install count of more than one million. According to a report from Malwarebytes, the same developer was exposed twice in the past for distributing adware on Google Play but it was allowed to continue publishing apps after submitting cleaned versions.