Security News

A new Android banking trojan with over 50,000 installations has been observed distributed via the official Google Play Store with the goal of targeting 56 European banks and carrying out harvesting sensitive information from compromised devices. Xenomorph, like Alien and ERMAC, is yet another example of an Android banking trojan that's focused on circumventing Google Play Store's security protections by masquerading as productivity apps such as "Fast Cleaner" to trick unaware victims into installing the malware.

A new malware called Xenomorph distributed through Google Play Store has infected more than 50,000 Android devices to steal banking information. Researchers at fraud and cybercrime prevention company ThreatFabric analyzing Xenomorph found code that is similar to Alien banking trojan.

Google on Wednesday announced plans to bring its Privacy Sandbox initiatives to Android in a bid to expand its privacy-focused, but also less disruptive, advertising technology beyond the desktop web. "The Privacy Sandbox on Android builds on our existing efforts on the web, providing a clear path forward to improve user privacy without putting access to free content and services at risk," Anthony Chavez, vice president of product management for Android security and privacy, said.

Google plans to extend its rework of web ad technology - the optimistically named Privacy Sandbox - to Android devices in an effort to limit the misuse of data in its mobile ecosystem. It began to take shape a year after Google undertook Project Strobe, a rethink of Google Account and Android data access in the wake of ongoing security and privacy problems.

The public preview for the Android apps for Windows 11 is now live in the US, allowing users to run Android apps natively on the Windows desktop. The feature relies on a new platform called Windows Subsystem for Android that runs Android apps in a virtual machine to provide compatibility with the Android Open Source Project and hardware input devices.

The February edition of Google's monthly Android security update tackles, among other vulnerabilities, an eyebrow-raising critical flaw in Android 12. This February security patch batch marks the final official update for Google's Pixel 3 smartphones, which launched in October 2018, which is like a century ago for the internet goliath.

Google has released the February 2022 Android security updates, addressing two critical vulnerabilities, one being a remote escalation of privilege that requires no user interaction. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2021-39675, carrying a "Critical" severity rating, and affects only Android 12, the latest version of the popular OS. These flaws are typically leveraged by sophisticated spyware vendors that independently discover and privately use zero-days in mobile operating systems.

A financially motivated campaign that targets Android devices and spreads mobile malware via SMS phishing techniques since at least 2018 has spread its tentacles to strike victims located in France and Germany for the first time. Dubbed Roaming Mantis, the latest spate of activities observed in 2021 involve sending fake shipping-related texts containing a URL to a landing page from where Android users are infected with a banking trojan known as Wroba whereas iPhone users are redirected to a phishing page that masquerades as the official Apple website.

Two different Android banking Trojans, FluBot and Medusa, are relying on the same delivery vehicle as part of a simultaneous attack campaign, according to new research published by ThreatFabric. The ongoing side-by-side infections, facilitated through the same smishing infrastructure, involved the overlapping usage of "App names, package names, and similar icons," the Dutch mobile security firm said.

Flubot, the Android spyware that's been spreading virally since last year, has hitched its infrastructure wagon up to another mobile threat known as Medusa. That's according to ThreatFabric, which found that Medusa is now being distributed through the same SMS-phishing infrastructure as Flubot, resulting in high-volume, side-by-side campaigns.