Sun Team Hacking Group Insert Spyware on Korean Victims Devices to Steal photos, Contacts, and SMS

An underground hacking group called “Sun Team” distributing spyware on Korean based victims and infiltrate the sensitive information from their devices.

Cybercriminals insert malware on google play store in various apps names such as ApplockFree, FastAppLock, and few other names.

Once the victims download and install the malware,  it copies sensitive information including personal photos, contacts, and SMS messages and sends them to the attacker.

These Malicious apps are uploaded by the “Sun Team” and the name was taken from email accounts and Android devices used in the previous attack.

Since its an earlier stage of an attack, infections is quite low compared with previous campaigns.

Malicious Google Play Store App

There are 3 apps are found in play store which in two different related categories and the malware also attempt to spreading via friends asking them to install the apps and offer feedback via a Facebook account.

The first app in this attack, 음식궁합 (Food Ingredients Info), which offers information about food, second and third apps are related to  Fast AppLock and AppLockFree, are security related. 

” Fast AppLock secretly steal device information and receive commands and additional executable (.dex) files from a cloud control server”

AppLockFree is performing a reconnaissance operation and it setting the foundation for the next stage.

Spyware Hacking Operations

This Spyware using  Dropbox and Yandex to upload the sensitive files that collected from the infected device via command & control sever

An attacker using the same email address to for two malware campaign which confirms that both actors have been controlled by the same Sun Team hacking group.

According to McAfee, we found information logs from the same test Android devices that Sun Team used for the malware campaign we reported in January. The logs had a similar format and used the same abbreviations for fields as in other Sun Team logs.

“In the new malware on Google Play, we again see that the Korean writing in the description is awkward. As in the previous operation, the Dropbox account name follows a similar pattern of using names of celebrities, such as Jack Black, who appeared on Korean TV.”

These features are strong evidence that the actors behind these campaigns are not native South Koreans but are familiar with the culture and language. Researchers said.