Rewterz Threat Alert – CoronaVirus Update App Leads to Spying on Users

Severity

Medium

Analysis Summary

A potential cyberespionage campaign, which researchers have named Project Spy, that infects Android and iOS devices with spyware on users downloading this application. Using this pandemic as a lure, an app called Coronavirus Updates was launched to disguise users to download the app so that threat actors can spy on the users. The app have relatively low amount of downloads in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc because of app’s false capabilities or maybe the threat actors waiting for a “right time” to inject the malicious codes. It’s also possible that the apps are being used to test other possible techniques. A possible indication for timing might be when the app reaches a specific number of downloads or infected devices.

The app is capable of stealing messages from popular messaging apps by abusing the notification permissions to read the notification content and saving it to the database.

The app intercepts received broadcasts and saves notification content in a database.

The Project Spy version has similar capabilities to the first version, with the addition of the following:

• Stealing notification messages sent from WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram
• Abandoning the FTP mode of uploading the recorded images

Impact

• Information theft
• Exposure  of sensitive data
• Collect device and system information (i.e., IMEI, device ID, manufacturer, model and phone number), location information, contacts stored, and call logs

Indicators of Compromise

SHA-256

• e394e53e53cd9047d6cff184ac333ef7698a34b777ae3aac82c2c669ef661dfe
• e8d4713e43241ab09d40c2ae8814302f77de76650ccf3e7db83b3ac8ad41f9fa
• 29b0d86ae68d83f9578c3f36041df943195bc55a7f3f1d45a9c23f145d75af9d
• 3a15e7b8f4e35e006329811a6a2bf291d449884a120332f24c7e3ca58d0fbbdb

URL

• http[:]//ftp[.]xxxx[.]com/
• http[:]//cashnow[.]ee/webpanel/getcommands[.]php

Remediation

• Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
• Always download legitimate and recommend applications.