New type of phishing attack that targets Android phones

Researchers from Check Point the cyber-security company recently found one fresh type of sophisticated phishing assault created for tricking Android-powered smart-phone owners into downloading malevolent settings which pretend to be harmless updates of network configuration. They unearthed that the attack is successful on the majority of latest Android phones, notably LG G6, Huawei P10, Samsung Galaxy S9, and Sony Xperia XZ Premium. However any other smart-phone running Android too is vulnerable to the attack.

In practice the various named Android phones impacted with the attack utilize OTA (over-the-air) provisioning that lets operators of mobile networks install network-specific configurations onto fresh phones that get into their network. But according to the researchers, OMA CP (Open Mobile Alliance Client Provisioning), which's the OTA provisioning of industry standard, has limited authentication techniques. So it's exploitable by hackers who, pretending to be network operators, dispatch spurious OMA CP missives to mobile owners.

Such missives dupe end-users into downloading rogue configurations capable of intercepting the entire Internet traffic crossing their phones, by using one proxy server under the control of the hacker who then manages reading the target phones' e-mails. www.helpnetsecurity.com posted this, September 4, 2019.

Explaining further, Check Point's researchers state anybody using one cellular network is risked with such assaults, since for the missive that comes to the phone there's no need for any Wi-Fi network connection for the device, while with just one message the attacker can acquires complete hold over the device's e-mails.

In March this year, the researchers informed the sellers of impacted Android phones their findings. Other than Sony, all other sellers said they either deployed or planning for deploying fixes towards resolving the issue. Samsung has incorporated certain fix within its May 2019 Security Maintenance Release (SVE-2019-14073). During July, 2019, LG issued a fix (LVE-SMP-190006). Further there's plans of Huawei for incorporating UI fixes to set the industry standard OMA CP within P series or Mate series of its smart-phones' next generation handsets.

To counter the vulnerability of Android devices, users getting any unsolicited SMS, no matter whether its sender seems as the carrier, must instantly enquire from the carrier whether it's legitimate.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/9/2019