Egypt used Google Play in spy campaign targeting its own citizens, researchers say

guest · Oct 3, 2019

Egypt used Google Play in spy campaign targeting its own citizens, researchers say
Google removes app that logged detailed information about users' calls
October 3, 2019
https://arstechnica.com/information...n-targeting-its-own-citizens-researchers-say/

Hackers with likely ties to Egypt’s government used Google’s official Play Store to distribute spyware in a campaign that targeted journalists, lawyers, and opposition politicians in that country, researchers from Check Point Technologies have found.

The app, called IndexY, posed as a means for looking up details about phone numbers. It claimed to tap into a database of more than 160 million Arabic numbers. One of the permissions it required was access to a user’s call history and contacts. Despite the sensitivity of that data, those permissions were understandable, given the the app’s focus on phone numbers.

Behind the scenes, IndexY logged whether each call was incoming, outgoing, or missed as well as its date and duration.
Evading Google Play vetting... again
The attackers “were able to evade Google’s protections,” Lotem Finkelshtein, Check Point’s threat intelligence group manager, told Ars. “Getting into Google Play is something that gives the attacking infrastructure credibility.
Click to expand...

Malicious and unwanted apps on Google Play have emerged as one of the most vexing security problems for the Android operating system. Discoveries such as this, this, this, and this, sometimes infecting hundreds of millions of devices, are a regular occurrence

The takeaway is that the attackers need not be sophisticated to succeed at surveilling their targets.
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Check Point: The Eye on the Nile

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