Android Trojan Called “SpyDealer” Spying on More Than 40 Apps Including Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype,Telegram

A Newly Discovered Android Malware “SpyDealer” Spying on more than 40  Apps and steals  Personal information including contacts list, Call History, capture the screen shot, users GPS Location and other Confidential information.

All user’s data exfiltrated by abusing the Android accessibility service feature and uses exploits from a commercial rooting app for data theft by gaining root Access of the Targeted Android.

This “SpyDealer” Spyware has not been distributed through the Google Play store But according to the evidence Chinese users becoming infected through compromised wireless networks.

Infected Apps by this Malware including, WeChat, Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, Line, Viber, QQ, Tango, Telegram, Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, Android Native Browser, Firefox Browser, Oupeng Brower, QQ Mail, NetEase Mail, Taobao, and Baidu Net Disk.

SpyDealer Performing very Sophisticated Hijacking Attacks with infected users and its also taking advantages from Rooting Applications such as  “Baidu Easy Root” and gaining Root access of the targeted Victims.

Also Read  Android Malware Called “CopyCat” Infected Around 14 Million Android Devices and Gained over $1.5 Million

How Does  SpyDealer Trojan Works

Once SpyDealer Successfully Installed with an Android Mobile, it automatically hides its icon in the infected Mobile and it has two Broadcast receivers which are used for listening to the events such as device booting up and network connection status.

SpyDealer Malware  Initial infection not yet identified but Paloalto belives that initial infection would be through compromised wireless network.

According to Paloalto networks, Its use the key service component AaTService, it retrieves configuration information from the local asset file named readme.txt Whenever any of these events are broadcasted at First Launch.

A File Called readme.txt  Contain information such as IP address of the  Remote server (C&C Sever), Malware actions, and connected network information such as WiFi.

This File’s First Line Contains the IP Address (222.82.230.202) of the Command and control server, second line configures what actions the malware can take on mobile networks, and the third line specifies what actions are allowed under a Wi-Fi network.

Various C2 channels are used by this malware to update the configurations settings and SpyDealer version 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 gain the root exploits used by commercial rooting app “Baidu Easy Root”.

It  Drops a customized su file named sux from assets to the app’s own data directory. and Checks if the infected device is already rooted or not. If the root privilege is available, there is no need to escalate to root privilege.

Malware Check the Exploit file ( /data/data/<package_name>/broot/raw.zip) whether  it is existing with the infected Android Device If there is no such file, the malware will download it from C&C server and check the file integrity by Comparing MD5  Value.”

“SpyDealer is capable of receiving commands from remote servers via a number of different channels by either actively initiating connections to C2 servers or passively receiving instructions from C2 servers. These channels include via SMS, UDP and TCP connections.”

Once Vicitims Comprosed, it can able to Spy Recording the phone call and the surrounding audio & video, Taking photos via both the front and rear camera, Monitoring the compromised device’s location, Taking screenshots, Automatically answer incoming phone calls from a specific number.

PloAlto Said , SpyDealer is only completely effective against Android devices running versions between 2.2 and 4.4, as the rooting tool it uses only supports those versions.

This represents approximately 25% of active Android devices worldwide. On devices running later versions of Android, it can still significant amounts of information, but it cannot take actions that require higher privileges.