Android Security & Malware

Google fixed 2 Pixel vulnerabilities which are being actively exploited in the wild by forensic companies
CVE-2024-29745 refers to a vulnerability in the fastboot firmware used to support unlocking/flashing/locking. Forensic companies are rebooting devices in After First Unlock state into fastboot mode on Pixels and other devices to exploit vulnerabilities there and then dump memory.
CVE-2024-29748 refers to a vulnerability providing the ability to interrupt a factory reset triggered by a device admin app. It appears they've implemented a partial solution in firmware.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/11860-vulnerabilities-exploited-in-the-wild-fixed-based-on-grapheneos-reports

Technical analysis of Android malware Vultur
https://research.nccgroup.com/2024/03/28/android-malware-vultur-expands-its-wingspan/

After almost 7 years, new version of drozer compatible with Python 3 and modern Java was released.
If you don't know, drozer was a very popular security testing framework for Android
https://github.com/WithSecureLabs/drozer

Demonstration of using BlueDucky to exploit 0-click Bluetooth vulnerability of unpatched Android smartphone (CVE-2023-45866)
Exploit was triggered by Raspberry Pi 4 and then by Android running NetHunter
https://youtu.be/GOGW7U1f2RA

A Year in Review of Zero-Days Exploited In-the-Wild in 2023
-In 2023, there were 97 zero-day vulnerabilities exploited, a significant rise of over 50% compared to 2022 (62 vulnerabilities)
-Espionage was the primary motive behind 48 out of 58 zero-day vulnerabilities analyzed
-Most of the zero-day vulnerabilities found last year were in phones, operating systems, and web browsers
https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/Year_in_Review_of_ZeroDays.pdf

Malicious proxy malware was found in 28 apps available on Google Play Store. These trojanized apps were overall installed over 3,240,000 times
https://www.humansecurity.com/learn/blog/satori-threat-intelligence-alert-proxylib-and-lumiapps-transform-mobile-devices-into-proxy-nodes

Address Sanitizer for Bare-metal Firmware
This led to early discovery of memory corruption issues that were easily remediated due to the actionable reports produced by KASan. These builds can be used with fuzzers to detect edge case bugs
https://security.googleblog.com/2024/03/address-sanitizer-for-bare-metal.html

Detecting Banker Malware Installed on Android Devices
https://itnext.io/detecting-banker-malware-installed-on-android-devices-4c96287138e2

BlueDucky automates exploitation of Bluetooth pairing vulnerability that leads to 0-click code execution
▪️automatically scans for devices
▪️store MAC addresses of devices that are no longer visible but have enabled Bluetooth
▪️uses Rubber Ducky payloads
https://www.mobile-hacker.com/2024/03/26/blueducky-automates-exploitation-of-bluetooth-pairing-vulnerability-that-leads-to-0-click-code-execution/

SSRF in Mobile Security Framework (MobSF) version 3.9.5 Beta and prior (CVE-2024-29190)
MobSF does not perform any input validation when extracting the hostnames in android:host, so requests can also be sent to local hostnames. This can lead to server-side request forgery (SSRF). An attacker can cause the server to make a connection to internal-only services within the organization's infrastructure
https://github.com/MobSF/Mobile-Security-Framework-MobSF/security/advisories/GHSA-wfgj-wrgh-h3r3

Bluetooth vulnerability allows unauthorized user to record & play audio on Bluetooth speaker via #BlueSpy
Prevention section explains how you can check if your Bluetooth LE speakers/headsets are vulnerable to this attack using nRF Connect app
https://www.mobile-hacker.com/2024/03/22/bluetooth-vulnerability-allows-unauthorized-user-to-record-and-play-audio-on-bluetooth-speakers/

Oversecured published vulnerability scan reports for 225 Google-owned apps
https://blog.oversecured.com/Oversecured-Apps-Care-Part-1-Vulnerability-disclosure-of-225-Google-apps/

Android crimeware reports on Tambir, Dwphon and Gigabud malware families
https://securelist.com/crimeware-report-android-malware/112121/

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The complexity of reversing Flutter applications
https://www.fortiguard.com/events/5403/nullcon-berlin-2024-the-complexity-of-reversing-flutter-applications
[slides] https://filestore.fortinet.com/fortiguard/research/nullcon.pdf

Analysis of suspicious SMS that leads to install Android malware
https://labs.k7computing.com/index.php/suspicious-text-messages-alert/

A vulnerability (CVE-2023-6241) in the Arm Mali GPU to gain arbitrary kernel code execution from an untrusted app on a Pixel 8 with MTE enabled
https://github.blog/2024-03-18-gaining-kernel-code-execution-on-an-mte-enabled-pixel-8/

Android Phishing Scam Using Malware-as-a-Service on the Rise in India
https://www.mcafee.com/blogs/other-blogs/mcafee-labs/android-phishing-scam-using-malware-as-a-service-on-the-rise-in-india/

LTair: The LTE Air Interface Tool
https://research.nccgroup.com/2024/03/14/ltair-the-lte-air-interface-tool/

Write-up and PoC kernel exploit affecting Pixel 7/8 Pro running Android 14 targeting Mali GPU
https://github.com/0x36/Pixel_GPU_Exploit