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"SMSZombie" Malware Infects 500,000 Android Users In China
wiredmikey writes "Researchers have recently discovered a new sophisticated and resilient mobile threat targeting Android phones that is said to have infected about 500,000 devices, mainly in China. Called 'SMSZombie,' the malware is stubborn and hard to remove, but users outside of China have little to worry about with this latest discovery. The prime function of the mobile malware is to exploit a vulnerability in the mobile payment system used by China Mobile, making it of little value to the fraudsters outside of China. The malware takes advantage of a vulnerability in the China Mobile SMS Payment process to generate unauthorized payments to premium service providers, and can also remotely control the infected device. It has been spread via wallpaper apps that sport provocative titles and nude photos, and can only be removed using a lengthy process beyond the skills of a typical android user."
In addition to removing it from device administrators. Which is like 2 actual steps. It's very tame compared to what it _could_ take.
We're not zombies!
wallpaper apps that sport provocative titles and nude photos
How can someone see that and not realize its gotta be a scam?
Probably just as effective as putting up a "idiots click here please".
The ability to be scammed is hardly limited to senior citizens.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm sorry, but seriously? Two steps is beyond the skill of the typical Android user?
Besides that, maybe they shouldn't choose "YES" when explicitly prompted for device administrator permissions for the app?
THIS is the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse we're constantly warned about??
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I was expecting something like an os reinstall or something... Those instructions seem simple and straightforward.
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The "lengthy process" consists of:
Go to System Settings >> Location and Security >> Select Device Administrators
Remove "Android System Service"
Go to System Settings >> Applications >> Manage Applications >> Android System Service
Choose "Uninstall"
OMG!!!
4 steps!!!!!! It's so complicated!!!!!!!!
In addition to removing it from device administrators. Which is like 2 actual steps. It's very tame compared to what it _could_ take.
Yes, since they're a "security" company, they're taking the Norton approach and making the instructions as scary and as lengthy as they could make them.
First of all, if the device is under a device administrators' control, I doubt very much that the phone would have gotten infected in the first place. And second of all, I can understand the normal Chinese grandma not understanding the instructions:
"Just uninstall the 'naked girls' application, there is nothing more to it than that. "
But at the very least, this one instruction should be more than enough for a device administrator to know what to do. And it should also be more than enough for the Chinese grandfather who originally installed the 'naked girls' application in the first place and who knew enough about his phone to enable the "allow applications from unknown sources". So making two different sets of instructions, one for the administrator and one for the user, and hiding them between one more level of links on the web site, is only making it seem more difficult than it really is.
Also, I'd love to know where they got "that is said to have infected 500,000 devices", they don't quote anyone actually saying that. One can only assume this is a figure that the "Security" company itself made entirely up, based on what? they don't actually say.
Apple is quite lucky that that nobody ever weaponized anything back in the good old days of Jailbreakme... In-browser TIFF exploit leading to full root access just by loading a web page.
Google, of course, is similarly lucky that nobody bothered to do anything wacky during the "yeah, everything you type gets silently dumped to a root shell, why do you ask?" period in early android...
Punchline is, the state of 'mobile' security(really, security in general) is pretty fucking dire, and the current frenzy to tie as many payment systems as possible to mobile phones is complete insanity, except from the perspective of the bottom lines of the respective payment processors, naturally.
In addition to removing it from device administrators. Which is like 2 actual steps. It's very tame compared to what it _could_ take.
Does anyone have a decent remote kit for actually delousing Android phones? I've tried LogMeIn Rescue but the only thing their (premium, $79,- mo) mobile access for Rescue (which is £550 per user or so)...
The only thing this "cloud" application supports for Android is the ability to change network settings (which might be useful for reconfiguring devices, but hardly for rescuing them), and to set MMS settings.
Way to fail at that, LogMeIn. Fortunately, they let you trial it first, and I *did* end up buying Rescue itself.
Everything I've seen that even remotely works seem to demand full physical access to the phone, which seems a horrid oversight for a networked device ending up more and more often in Enterprise.
Any solutions? Anything at all for a (hypothetical) stressed-out SysAdmin who's suddenly gotten Android support in his lap? :-)
Please explain in detail, if possible
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
...post a lenghty rant about miscoceptions of Android users, and quote the OP too. Unfortunately, I'm posting from an Android device and do not posess such skills.
Given how little customization there is during a typical phone's OS install process(during the image build process, yes, the image install process, not so much), "just reflash it" actually counts as fairly noob-friendly, if somewhat tedious, advice.
Unless the bootloader is shot, or the vendor has a hostile or nonexistent reflash process, it's pretty much just a matter of waiting while a nontrivial chunk of the phone's flash gets overwritten...
How is that a lengthy process beyond the skill of most android users? My father could do that easily and he barely knows how to dial his android.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
open to trolls, as well.
In a story about fraud on the Android platform someone points out that Android is open to fraud. Personally, I think it was a play on words and not a technical comment. Either way, I don't think the word troll means what you think it means. If you thought they were serious you could have explained why they were wrong and help keep this a useful technical forum. And I want a pony.
Amazon apparently still needs to learn this, given the recent Kindle Touch remote root exploit.
#DeleteChrome
Wow, Another cowardly anonymous schmuck Apple fanboy hates on Android...and this one got first post.
Sorry guys, but he's got a point. The attack vector here is an app that people voluntarily run, and the walled garden has been effective against that. Are there other vectors? Yeah. But that doesn't mean that his point about this one vector is wrong...it's not wrong at all. It took 5 years for the first malicious app to slip past Apple, and even then, the nature of how it all works meant Apple could remove it from everyone's iPhone with a single update. Android can't boast the same, either on the prevention or the remediation side. I don't hold any hate for either side, but this is just simple truth we're talking here. There have been scores of trojaned Android apps, and many for jailbroken iPhones as well...but only one, ever, for standard iPhones.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
When is SMS just going to vanish already?
"Researchers at Kaspersky have discovered an app called “Find and Call” in Apple’s iOS App Store, Forbes noted on Thursday. The malicious app masquerades as a tool for simplifying contact lists but it instead uploads a user’s full contact list to a remote server and proceeds to send SMS and email spam to every person in the list."
Because capitalism is inherently anti-free market. In free market capitalism, we'd have processors coming in at cost + small% to do the same thing. Instead, we have monopoly based economics, with Visa/MC having a vast majority of the business, and network effects that keep out most competitors. So the price for the service is based on profit maximization, not revenue maximization at a minimum profit level.
I've seen a $200 box with a patent sell for $50,000+ because the "value" was $50,000 plus, but the patent was obvious and not novel (It was essentially signal cancellation for an expensive piece of communications gear, with court cases about it because two companies patented the same thing at the same time, both valid because the patent office isn't technical enough and the filing periods overlapped so neither was granted before the other was filed, so not previous art for the other).
Learn to love Alaska
"Those who would give up app Liberty, to purchase smartphone Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
- Benjamin Franklin
There are two steps, where each step itself has steps. The concept of steps within steps should be familiar from assembling flat-pack furniture, where the steps to put the cams and screws into one shelf are often combined as inner steps into one outer step, or from the Bible where each book is made of chapters and each chapter made of verses. This way, the user knows how far along he is.
Part 1: Deactivate trojan's administrative privilege (6 taps)
1. Open Settings. 2. Open Location and Security. 3. Open Select Device Administrators. 4. Select Android System Service. 5. Choose Deactivate. 6. OK.
Part 2: Remove trojan entirely from device (6 taps)
1. Open Settings. 2. Open Applications. 3. Open Manage Applications. 4. Select Android System Service. 5. Choose Uninstall. 6. OK.
I'm not sure I agree with you, at least for iOS. Security was dire around v1.0, but now we're at 5.x going on 6.x and a lot has changed.
iOS is definitely more secure than Mac/Windows/Ubuntu.
There is always room for improvement, but iOS has sandboxing and code signing and full disk encryption with a hardware only encryption key derrivation algorithm, that is deliberately slow, providing a private key that can be erased remotely or after a few failed decryption attempts.
A tethering app is not malware. It's software that the users wanted, but the cell phone companies didn't want. And it's "past," not "passed."
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Yep. That is the one malicious app.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
From the article:
"According to TrustGo, the malware is being spread through online forums and has been found in several packages on China’s largest mobile app marketplace, GFan"
Better revise your "attack vector" description.
Most Android users only use Google Play Store, which not only is not known to be affected by this malware, it also has the ability to remove it from users' phones after the fact - so you're wrong there too.
You even admitted there is malware for 'jailbroken' iphones, which would be a more direct comparison here.
Android likely has more malware potential, but this specific attack isn't a problem for those who stick with Google Play Store. Those who use alternative stores should understand the risks (or in fact, anyone using technology such as the internet should understand the risks).
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
The "Wallpaper" trojan has to get administrative priviledges from the user. Social engineering trick.
Then it downloads the malicious code. Not impressed.
Finally, it monitors keystrokes. Key logger anyone?
Is it just me, or does the company (TrustGo) that called this malware "Sophisticated" have an ulterior motive? Care to purchase a mobile security product?
http://www.trustgo.com/en/
Except you can jailbreak it. This means all bets are off. You can arbitrarily disable one or all of those aforementioned features -- and breaking a 10,000 combination code is a joke for most medium to high end computers.
There's only one that you know of. Keep repeating the lie. Maybe it'll come true one day, if you wish upon a star. LOL
Just because researchers can't bulk-download even free applications and are not permitted to do so on-device, it makes it hard for anyone to say if any application is malicious.
The ones that you see are just lucky guesses, someone actually bothered looking as to what it did, or come out with it themselves (in the case of Charlie Miller).
You think their review does jack and shit to people who want your stuff?
It's still malware. It said it was a flashlight and it had code to do something completely different. Malware that researchers launch to clean up other malware is still malware.
Ultimately, it doesn't even matter if it is. It just proves that the so-called "review" can only detect the stupidly obvious attempts at malware. Any malware or spyware with a delayed payload will make it through perfectly fine.
People peddling mobile phone security produce frighting figures of what happens when you don't own their product....
AFAIK, IOS doesn't have full disk encyrption and I don't know what you're on about with the "hardware only encryption key derivation algorithm". I just don't see how a phone OS is going to be more secure than a full OS with proper full disk encryption (e.g. LUKS).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Did you read the article? You download the app from whatever store, then it downloads a second file which it then installs as a 'driver' which does 'bad things'. The user is prompted if they want to install it, but the box just reappears if you hit no. That would be hard to detect from which ever store it was posted to.
Obviously the fact that a downloaded wallpaper can install this 'driver' is wrong and needs to be looked at.
Blatant Advert: Android Apps!
For all the bitching I hear from FSF weenies about Apple, those of us who buy their products don't have to put up with this shit.
That's because the "Walled garden" system allows Apple to usually be tight-lipped about any IPhone vulnerabilities whereas Android flaws are found by the developer community and made public. If you are comfortable with not knowing about your phones vulnerabilities, then fine...Ignorance is bliss. BUT...occasionally, someone outside Apple finds an IOS vulnerability like THIS very recent one involving SMS spoofing:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/261068/iphone_flaw_allows_sms_spoofing_says_hacker.html
Oops now I've done it. I killed your euphoria.
FYI:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/integration/
Data Protection
To protect all data at rest, iPhone features built-in hardware encryption using AES 256-bit encoding. Building on the hardware encryption capabilities of iPhone, email messages and attachments stored on the device can be further secured by using Data Protection. Data Protection uses a user’s device passcode to generate a strong encryption key. This key prevents data from being accessed when the device is locked, ensuring that critical information is secured even if the device is compromised.
My understanding is there is in fact full encryption of the contents of the iPhone, i.e. you can't access the data without knowing the key.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
GFan is probably bad enough, but Installing an application from some random-ass website is just asking for it.
FTFA: "the malware is being spread through online forums and has been found in several packages on Chinaâ(TM)s largest mobile app marketplace, GFan."
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Someone should tell these people: http://www.elcomsoft.com/iphone-forensic-toolkit.html
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
That doesn't sound like full disk encryption - they're only protecting "data at rest". I'm also concerned that a user's device passcode wouldn't have enough entropy (never mind the ease with which you can shoulder surf an iPhone user).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
I don't think you understand what a tethering app really is. It's not something that researches launch to clean up other malware. It's something that allowed you to use your iPhone as a hotspot, before any of the cellular providers had permitted it (at all). Back in the days when unlimited data plans for iPhones were somewhat common, this was seen as a problem by the cellular providers. People didn't download the flashlight app and say "Ah, surprise! My phone is doing something malicious!" Nothing malicious at all was happening. The "mal" in "malware" doesn't come from virus writers' love of Firefly's lead character...it stands for "malicious," and the people who downloaded the app knew exactly what they were getting, and wanted that functionality. Even the articles that refer to that app do not call it malware.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
It's like Windows vs. Unix. Windows actually has a great permission system, ACLs and other things that could be used to lock it down tighter than Unix (which until recently only acquired stuff liek ACLs and such, usually bolted on and never quite working right). But Unix is considered far safer because its permission system is simpler (easier to understand) and that leads to a lot more effective protection. With ACLs and stuff, there's always a problem of "what do I do to make this work" and you end up asking for ALL permissions just because you're too lazy to figure it out (or your boss wants the fix out NOW).
The other problem is Dancing Pigs. Uesrs just don't care for popups, and this is a huge problem on iOS as well as Android. That permission list is useless if the user wants the app (and ICS/JB make it easier ot skip by put that nice big "Download and Install" button on top, coupled with the "Additional Permissions" list).
iOS has the same issue with notifications. The current notification on locatoin isn't the best though since it applies to anything that has location information embedded in it - photos for example (an app wanting access to the photo library will trigger the popup).
As for SMS and the like - the only reason IOS is "safer" is because Apple realized that and made the SMS APIs locked - if you want to send an SMS you have to go through the SMS app (or Siri), or use your own SMS gateway and write your own interface to it.
Of course, the other problem with Android permissions is context - WHY do you need the permissions? "Full Internet Access" - why? Is it for ads? Is it because of additional content? Contacts - why? Access to friends for gaming? Profiling for ads? Even iOS can't provide this information...
In the context of this article, it's probably worth noting that(even if the iPhone feature described works exactly as advertised) it is aimed at mitigating a completely different class of attack.
Disk encryption setups aim to protect a lost or stolen device, in the physical custody of the attacker, from revealing whatever information is on the disk. They have no effect when the device is on and operating under the user's credentials(transparency is considered a feature).
This attack in China is an attack on a live system, using the credentials of the user(or higher) to perform malicious operations as them. Even if the disk were encrypted in a suitably robust way, it'd be happily handing over whatever this bug asked for.
If you're willing to open your front door and let any stranger in your house or loan then the keys to your car withing first doing a background check then sure, you deserve to have your shit stolen.
I on the other hand prefer having the freedom to do MORE with my Android phone. I use to have an iPhone and will never go back to that POS locked down for a baby device. A phone IS a computer and you treat it the same. You don't just go installing anything and everything on your computer do you?
Someone should tell these people: http://www.elcomsoft.com/iphone-forensic-toolkit.html
From your linked site:
"Enhanced Forensic Access to iPhone/iPad/iPod Devices running iOS 4"
[...]
Protected file system dumps can be extracted from iPhone devices equipped with on-board hardware encryption and running iOS 4.x. Supported devices include iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (both GSM and CDMA models), first-gen iPad, and latest releases of iPod Touch (3rd and 4th generation).
In other words, they don't support the latest-generation iPhone (4S) or iOS (5), nor the last two generations of iPad. According to Apple, as of June 2012 almost 80% of the 365 million iOS devices sold had been upgraded to iOS5.
Maybe it works unofficially on these, but iOS5 and the iPhone 4S have been out for almost a year now. I imagine the ability to break into these would be a significant product feature they'd want to promote--if they had it.
Look at Discover card. It was backed by Sears, pushed with millions, then Sears went bankrupt. Coincidence? I think so, but I don't have visibility into their books to see if pushing a new option through was expensive enough to bankrupt one of the country's largest retailers. I just know I don't have the money to push it through.
Of course, your "Marxist Economics" model doesn't work in the real world: people aren't just willing to pay "what the market will bear" well beyond a "small%" profit but it's also THE ONLY WAY to fund advanced technology development of any kind.
Wait, "Free Market Capitalism" is Marxist economics? People in the US talk about the Free Market all the time, but I don't think anyone knows what it means anymore, other than economics professors, and obviously the ACs whining about the market don't take economics classes.
Learn to love Alaska
Ummm....
My guess is that you did not look for it?
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/17/2057207/iphone-bug-allows-sms-spoofing
Did you even read my post? I could be accused of being an Android fanboy, but definitely not an Apple one.
I worded my post so as to be as fair as possible to both sides, while correcting the previous post.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
"...beyond the skills of a typical android user."
It's 5 steps long, and at least one of those steps is essentially CTNB (click the Next button)
Ohhh...
I see what you did there.
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.