Older versions of Android contained various vulnerabilities that allowed gaining root access to the device. Many malicious programs exploited these to elevate their system privileges and gain persistence. The notorious Triada Trojan also used this attack vector. With time, the vulnerabilities were patched, and restrictions were added to the firmware. Specifically, system partitions in recent Android versions cannot be edited, even with superuser privileges. Ironically, this has inadvertently benefited malicious actors.
While external malware now faces greater permission restrictions, pre-installed malware within system partitions has become impossible to remove. Attackers are leveraging this by embedding malicious software into Android device firmware. This is how one of Kaspersky earlier findings, the Dwphon loader, functioned. It was built into system apps for over-the-air (OTA) updates. In March 2025, Kaspersky research highlighted the Triada Trojan’s evolved tactics to overcome Android’s enhanced privilege restrictions.
Read more…
Source: Kaspersky
Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- ArtiPACKED: Hacking Giants Through a Race Condition in GitHub Actions Artifacts
August 13, 2024
This research reviews an attack vector allowing the compromise of GitHub repositories, which not only has severe consequences in itself but could also potentially lead to high-level access to cloud environments. This is made possible through the abuse of GitHub Actions artifacts generated as part of organizations’ CI/CD workflows. A combination of misconfigurations and security flaws ...
- FBI investigating attempts to hack Biden-Harris and Trump campaigns
August 12, 2024
Federal investigators are looking into whether Iranian hackers targeted individuals associated with the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns, three people familiar with the investigation confirmed to CBS News. The FBI launched the probes in the early summer, after both presidential campaigns experienced attempted phishing schemes targeting people on the campaign, the sources said. Iran-backed cybercriminals are the ...
- EU’s Breton says Musk must comply with EU law ahead of Trump interview
August 12, 2024
EU industry chief Thierry Breton told billionaire Elon Musk in a letter on Monday he must comply with EU law ahead of Musk’s interview with U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on social media platform X. The interview, scheduled for 8PM Eastern Time (0000 Tuesday GMT), will also be accessible to users in the EU, Breton wrote, ...
- Ongoing Social Engineering Campaign Refreshes Payloads
August 12, 2024
On June 20, 2024, Rapid7 identified multiple intrusion attempts by threat actors utilizing techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) that are consistent with an ongoing social engineering campaign being tracked by Rapid7. The initial lure being utilized by the threat actors remains the same: an email bomb followed by an attempt to call impacted users and offer ...
- 5G network flaws could be abused to let hackers spy on your phone
August 12, 2024
5G basebands could be exploited by attackers to allow them to send fake messages to your contacts, or even hand over your credentials using a very real-looking website, experts have warned. Unveiled at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference, a research group from Pennsylvania State University presented their vulnerability sniffing tool 5GBaseChecker. Read more… Source: MSN News Sign up for ...
- Indirect prompt injection in the real world: how people manipulate neural networks
August 12, 2024
Large language models (LLMs) – the neural network algorithms that underpin ChatGPT and other popular chatbots – are becoming ever more powerful and inexpensive. Systems built on instruction-executing LLMs may be vulnerable to prompt injection attacks. A prompt is a text description of a task that the system is to perform, for example: “You are a ...