Hackers Tampered the Popular Android App With 50 Million Downloads to Deliver Malware

Threat actors tainted the popular Android app within Google play with more than 50 million installs to deliver the Triout Android malware.

The popular app package “com.psiphon3” that known for providing uncensored access to Internet content was abused by attackers and they repack it with spyware framework.

Security researchers from Bitdefender found the new tainted version of the app that disseminates the malware.

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“The original legitimate application is advertised as a privacy tool that enables access to the open internet when bundled with the Triout spyware framework it serves the exact opposite purpose.”

The tainted app was not distributed through Google Play, but it was through third-party app stores and the attackers bundled it with adware components(Google Ads, InMobi Ads, Mopub Ads) to generate revenue.

Triout Android malware hides its existence in the device and capable of collecting phone calls, log incoming text messages, record videos, take pictures, even collect GPS coordinates and send them to Command & Control server managed by the attackers.

According to researchers, both the tampered and legitimate app has the same user interface and the attackers only embedded the Triout spyware component. The current version of the legitimate app is v241 and the attackers tainted v91 of the application.

The new C&C server where the Triot dumping the information is still operational and it points to a French website that deals with magicdeal[.]fr.

“While the Triout Android spyware framework itself does not seem to have undergone changes in terms of code or capabilities, the fact that new samples are emerging and that threat actors are using extremely popular apps to bundled the malware,” researchers concluded.

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