VB2014 paper: Exposing Android white collar criminals

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Oct 22, 2014

Luis Corrons dives into the world of shady Android apps.

Over the next few months, we will be sharing VB2014 conference papers as well as video recordings of the presentations. Today, we have added 'Exposing Android white collar criminals' by Panda Security researcher Luis Corrons.

Android is by far the most popular operating system when it comes to mobile malware, and it isn't surprising that this year's conference programme included a number of talks on the tricks used by Android malware to infect devices.

But not all malicious apps need to use such tricks: Luis Corrons discussed various apps that use social engineering to subscribe the victim to premium rate SMS services. In many cases, the methods used are verging on legal - for instance, an app that requires the user to accept its terms and conditions, which openly state its purpose, but in a very small font.

  "To view the contents, you need to accept the terms and conditions." Note the extremely small font used to display those terms and conditions.

Other apps stray from the line of legality a little more, for instance by presenting a web page designed to trick users into believing it is the official Google Play store, or by claiming to be the official app of a popular brand.

  App pretending to be Google Play. Note how some of the numbers don't add up.

Despite the fact that it wasn't hard to find out who was behind these pieces malware, Luis said that getting those people prosecuted wasn't easy - if possible at all.

You can read Luis's paper here in HTML-format, or download it here as a PDF (no registration or subscription required).

Posted on 22 October 2014 by Martijn Grooten

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

VB2021 localhost videos available on YouTube

VB has made all VB2021 localhost presentations available on the VB YouTube channel, so you can now watch - and share - any part of the conference freely and without registration.

VB2021 localhost is over, but the content is still available to view!

VB2021 localhost - VB's second virtual conference - took place last week, but you can still watch all the presentations.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.