Security experts from Lookout identified thousands of spyware apps in Google Play that belongs to SonicSpy family.They identified this threat after their cloud Security tool flagged the apps.
This threat actor was deployed in February 2017 and they are more likely to be operating from Iraq.
Functionalities of Soniac
SonicSpy dubbed as Soniac distributed as messaging app. It will have the functionalities of the heavily encrypted app Telegram.
SonicSpy takes complete control over your phone, it can record Audio, Video, take photos with your phone camera, send text messages, make outbound, wifi access point information and information from call logs and contacts.
They do have a significant control over the phone and also it supports 73 remote instructions from attackers.
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Researchers from lookout said the functionality was straight forward due to how client server communication has been implemented and can be quickly confirmed via DNS poisoning and running Netcat.
Upon first execution itself, it removes the installer to hide from the victim and establish a connection with C&C server (arshad93.ddns[.]net:2222) and then its attempt to install a custom version of the Telegram app.
From the analyzed samples they identified it contains the similarities of malware family identified as spynote in mid-2016.Both of the malware families use the same non-standard port 2222.
In the case of SpyNote, the aggressor used a customized desktop application to inject malicious code into specific apps so a victim might still act with the legitimate practicality of the trojanized apps.
With the steady stream of SonicSpy apps, it appears probable that the actors behind it square measure employing a similar automated-build method, but their desktop tooling has not been recovered at this time in time.
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The account behind Soniac, iraqwebservice, has previously posted 2 alternative SonicSpy samples to the Play Store, though each sample is not any longer live.And the apps are Hulk Messenger and Troy Chat which has the same functionalities of SonicSpy Samples.
