By Dancho Danchev
It’s that time of the year! The moment when we look back, and reflect on Webroot’s Threat Blog most popular content for 2012.
Which are this year’s most popular posts? What distinguished them from the rest of the analyses published on a daily basis, throughout the entire year?
Let’s find out.
By Dancho Danchev
Largely driven by a widespread adoption of growth and efficiency oriented strategies applied by cybercriminals within the entire spectrum of the cybercrime ecosystem, we’ve witnessed the emergence and development of the mobile device market segment over the past few years. Motivated by the fact that more people own a mobile device than a PC, cybercriminals quickly adapted and started innovating in an attempt to capitalize on this ever-growing market segment within their portfolio of fraudulent operations.
In this post I’ll profile a DIY Mail-to-SMS flooder that’s abusing a popular feature offered by international and U.S based mobile carriers – the ability to SMS any number through an email message. The DIY SMS flooder exclusively targets U.S users.
More details:
By Joe McManus
Last week Adobe announced that they would no longer be supporting Flash for Android. Adobe will be removing Flash from the Android Marketplace and users should be wary of fake Flash apps for their Android Devices. Now to be fair to Adobe, they are not taking flash away from the Android platform but are focusing on the Adobe AIR cross platform runtime environment http://www.adobe.com/products/air.html. The reason Adobe is switching to AIR is to allow app developers to write one program for use on iOS and Android devices.
Let’s look at some of the fake Flash apps for Android that we have seen and what they do. This is just a small sampling; there are too many to highlight them all.
This first app we’ll look at is one of hundreds of premium SMS Trojans being distributed on third party markets that are fake installers for legitimate applications. What they really do is charge for what may or may not be a download of an already free app. The scam works when the user agrees to their ‘Terms’ and the app will send out three SMS messages containing SMS short codes that come with a fee. These messages go to a premium service setup by the malware author and will appear as charges on you phone bill. The charges vary depending on the user’s location but range around $8-12.
This has appeared many times as Flash Player 11, Flash Payer 10, FlashPlayer, etc. Webroot detects them as Android.FakeInst and has been tracking these type of fake installer for over a year; here, here and here.
Our next example is another scam of sorts. It doesn’t charge for anything but will install a bunch of aggressive advertising SDKs that are known to create ad-related notifications, shortcuts and bookmarks. This app requests 24 Android OS and device-specific permissions when, at most, it would need the INTERNET and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions. The additional 22 permissions are for the ad SDKs. Webroot detects one of the ad SDKs bundled with the app as a Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA) and labels it Android.Ads.Plankton.B.
Although it does download Adobe Flash for Android after agreeing to their License Agreement it does come with the cost of a bunch of other non-flash related stuff.
This final example is for an app that claims to be Flash Player but really installs an Adobe Flash Icon, that merely opens a browser window full of advertisements. These types of apps are annoying and really are meant to drive web traffic to sites so the developer can receive pay-per-click revenue, and in this case they deceive the customer into thinking they’re getting a known productive app. Like the previous example, this app isn’t malicious, but it’s more deceptive and doesn’t deliver on what it claims, for that Webroot detects Android.DreamStepFlash as a PUA.
Malicious and untrustworthy apps come in many different flavors, and as you can see, Adobe Flash is one that is used to lure unsuspecting users to install. Adobe will continue to release security updates for Adobe Flash and suggests you uninstall if your device is able to upgrade to Android 4.1.
Remember, always choose your apps wisely and download from a trusted source. Check reviews, research the developer and verify permissions requested before downloading.
By Nathan Collier
Earlier this year, the SMS Trojan Foncy was discovered targeting French-speaking Android Users. Now, we’ve come across a new Trojan targeting them using a similar SMS scam. The app pretends to be an app called BlackMart Alpha, which is already a little shady since it’s used to download apps that may otherwise cost money. This app is not found on Google Play and is not malicious in itself, but the fact that you can’t get it in the Google Play store makes it a prefect target for malware developers to make fake versions of it. Webroot detects this Trojan as Android.SMS.FakeB-Mart. It works by sending premium SMS messages to two different numbers (81211 and 81038), which have both been involved with scams that add a hefty Euro charge to the victim’s phone bill. In one case, someone was scammed out of €89.85 , or $110.49. Once the malicious app is installed, it looks like the legitimate BlackMart Alpha app, but doesn’t completely load. A pop-up box opens stating that it’s loading with a increasing percentage. This tricks the user into thinking the app is loading while it’s really sending premium SMS messages in the background.
The app deletes any incoming SMS messages from 81211 to hide any confirmation SMS messages.
Being tricked by this fake blackmarket app when trying to download pirated apps could end up being a lot more expensive than just paying for the app from a trusted app market. Another lesson to always install apps from trusted markets.
By Nathan Collier
Recently Webroot posted a blog about an app called “London Olympics Widget” which was found in a third party market that may need further clarification. This app is what we consider a Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA). PUAs are apps are not considered to be good, nor are they considered malware either. They are apps that walk a thin line and thus are in a grey area. The app in question was classified as a PUA because the of the advertisement SDK add-ons it contains. There are a lot of free apps out there that contain these advertisement SDK add-ons in order to create revenue, and that’s okay. It’s when these advertisement SDK add-ons are overly aggressive and display behaviors such as creating ad related home screen icons and bookmarks, accessing the contact list, and displaying ads in your notification bar that we call these PUAs. We detect these annoying apps in order to inform the user of its presence. Google has recently taken the same stance against these aggressive advertisements and has updated their Ad Policies to warn developers that this type of aggressive advertising will no longer be allowed in the market: Google Play Developer Program Policies
In the case of “London Olympics Widget”, it is a simple app that displays what events are going on in the Olympics on which days. Nothing wrong with that at all. The reason we have classified this as a Potentially Unwanted Application is because it is using the Olympics to draw people into installing their apps so they can make money on multiple aggressive advertisement SDK add-ons. It is the aggressive advertisement SDK add-ons that are requesting permissions to read contacts, look up device ids, and read SMS messages. Why do they want to read your SMS, collect your contacts and blast you with ads? Probably not to make your mobile experience better. Permissions are a scary thing, but just because an app has a permission to do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s malicious. It’s the code within the app that uses these permissions that makes the determination of good or bad. Can “London Olympics Widget” read your contacts and read your SMS? Yes, but that doesn’t mean they are using the data collected in a malicious way. They are using the data to for advertisement reasons which isn’t considered blatantly malicious, but is considered something you may not want on your device which is why we detect it as a PUA.
As always, make sure you install apps from safe markets, and if it has more permissions than what you think it should, be cautious. Scanning with Webroot SecureAnywhere Mobile will detect PUAs and malware to make sure users stay ad annoyance free, and safe while using a mobile device.
London Olympic Widget with shortcuts added by aggressive advertisement SDK
Screen shot of app showing Olympic event on August 11th
Ads that popped up in notification bar
By Dancho Danchev
Mobile devices are an inseparable part of the modern cybercrime ecosystem. From ATM skimmers with SMS notification next to fake antivirus scanners for Android users, the growth of the mobile malware segment is pretty evident.
In this post I’ll profile a recently spamvertised managed SMS flooding service, in the context of E-banking fraud, and just how exactly are cybercriminals using the service as a way to evade detection of their fraudulent transactions.
More details:
by Armando Orozco
Today, one of our Webroot SecureAnywhere for Android users reported seeing ad redirections while browsing on his Android device. As we began investigating, we noticed that there were a lot of other mobile users seeing the same thing – yes, on their iPhones as well! We were also able to reproduce the behavior on our devices.
This appears to be a clever Ad redirection using JavaScript. The pop-ups are survey offers for free electronics like iPads and iPhones. The users are asked to complete a survey, at the end of which their email address and phone number is also recorded. I know we’ve all seen these pop-ups before, but we’re not used to seeing them in our mobile world.
These pop-ups are not related to any apps you may have installed – they are a result of how the web page was written. Web developers use “alert()” function in JavaScript, which displays a message box requesting response from a user. The advertisers utilize this method to display their ads.
We are still investigating this issue and hope to track down the advertisers responsible. There does not appear to be anything malicious about these pop-ups for the time being, but we are sure malware authors will employ this tactic soon. With the rash of Rogue Applications and the recent discovery of a Rogue AV app (blog coming soon), we can see how this method could be exploited with malicious intent. Again, these are not platform or application-specific behaviors.
To remedy these pop-ups, you can disable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thanks to JohnDeth of our Webroot Community for bringing this to our attention.
by Nathan Collier
Recently we found new apps in alternative Chinese markets that we are considering a Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA). We are calling these apps Android.PUA.SMS.QuickPay. Lets look at a sample of this app. The sample we will look at is an app called “Screen Detection” which is an app that helps find dead pixels on your screen by displaying the colors red, green, blue, black, and white making it easy to see the dead pixel in contrast to these colors. Pretty simple app. Within a few seconds of opening the app this message pops up:
“Activate the full version, charges 2 Yuan, sending an SMS, 2 /. Customer Service Phone :010 -84681340-8035”
This app has limited functionality before requesting a premium SMS be sent for the full version, and that limited functionality only lasts a few seconds. If you do not agree to sending the premium SMS the app will just keep asking you to activate the full version whenever you click. Once you agree to the message it turns on your Wifi if not already on (Okay, that’s a little fishy), and sends a premium text message. After that the app works. Two Yuan is about 32 US cents, so people may just pay the small fee instead of spending the time to find a free version; which with a simple app that only shows four different colors as it’s functionality you would think there is something out there in the Chinese android market that will do the same for free.
It may not seem like much, but two Yuan at a time these guys are making a fortune off of apps that should be free. This is only one sample, there are several more very simple apps that we found that do various things, but all ask for a payment for it to function. Although there are legitimate Android Box apps out there, these apps are different in that they have very limited functionality, are signed by a different developer, and exploits simple apps that should be free by requesting payment for full versions before you even have a chance to see what it does.
Remember to always download from apps from a trusted source and be weary of messages asking to pay money for the full version so quick on the draw.
