Researchers in the city of Norway have been highly successful in discovering the Android vulnerability which can be easily exploited to use any application in terms of stealing the data and credentials. This particular problem is famous by the name of Strandhogg and has been very well derived from the old NORSE language after the ancient tactics of coastal raiding in this case of capturing the livestock.
This particular problem was very well detected in December 2019 by the East European security Company which was working in the financial sector. The company very well noticed that money was randomly disappearing from the accounts of several customers in the Czech Republic which was not at all tolerable by the company. The researchers say that this particular vulnerability is very well based on allowing the attackers to launch sophisticated attacks without any element of the requirement of rooting the Android device.
This particular system is very well associated with the concept of task affinity which is very well used in launching attacks and ultimately makes sure that the assumption of any kind of identity within the operating system will be proficiently done. Researchers have also shown that there will be a good number of pointing out of the attacks in this particular case and ultimately the attackers will have the ability to spoof the user interface so that people can get to know more about it without any problem. This particular Android vulnerability is being exploited in the malicious application very successfully because the banking and login credentials can be easily enjoyed by attackers.
According to researchers in the world of Android security, whenever any user opens the application on the device, there will be a fake user interface over the actual application which will take the people to think into the entire system by considering it as a legitimate application. Therefore, whenever the user types their username and password into the application, it will be stealing their data and the attacker ultimately will receive that particular data instantly from the device which will provide them with unauthorized accessibility to the sensitive data details of the banking application.
How the governments are taking note of this problem?
Strandhogg has already made the government take notice of the entire system because in basic numbers India is the second country with the highest possible number of smartphone users after China. The penetration element associated with this concept into the population is very high and the Indian Home Ministry has been already successful in setting the alert to the provincial governments about the vulnerability of Strandhogg. This point very well provides people with a significant factor of analysis and awareness by the threat analytical unit of the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre in the Home Ministry.
Things in this case will be very professionally sorted out because in the United States, the New Jersey Cyber Security and Communications Integration Cell is also very much aware of this point so incident reporting will be very professionally carried out. The experts in this particular case will be consistently at the forefront in looking out for the behavior which will indicate that the device has to be infected and the application has already been logged in by the users so that typographical errors or any other kind of related things can be taken care of and further people can improve their basic course of action.
What are the basic details that you need to know about the working of Strandhogg?
- According to the researchers, Strandhogg basically is a mistake that will be happening during the multitasking especially whenever the user will be switching between multiple tasks and procedures simultaneously.
- The operating Android system in this particular case will be based upon the concept of task reparenting which will divert the process of processing power to the application which has been correctly used on the screen.
- Researchers in this particular case very well justify that everything has been made available so that route accessibility and other associated things will be sorted out without any problem.
- According to the researchers, malicious applications that have been distributed through the Google Play Store if excellently installed in this particular application, then it will be downloading the attacking application with the use of knowledge and permission to carry out the things. Legitimate-looking dropper in this particular case will be made available which ultimately will allow the attacker to take advantage of the Strandhogg vulnerabilities.
- Researchers have already discovered 36 malicious applications using the Strandhogg which have been distributed on the Google Play Store. After the researchers Had alerted Google about all of these applications, they were removed from the App Store but however early in December 2019, Google did not develop a patch for the vulnerability even after being elected for approximately three months.
- Researchers in this particular case very well state that they have real evidence of attackers who have been using this particular problem and ultimately have been creating serious damage to the users. It is very obvious that after stealing the user’s banking credentials, hackers can easily have access to the SMS and two-factor authentication method which will provide them with the opportunity to bypass all the security applications and features of the banking application.
Researchers across the globe very well state that developers can easily retrieve some of the task-related information with the help of Android SDK but however it is not at all certain that developers can do this thing running into the foreground or not. Researchers have also pointed out that the developer of a genuine application can easily set the task affinity of the activities to some of the symbols which will be definitely helpful in reducing the risk to some extent.
One of the best possible ways of dealing with this particular problem is to use the mobile application security layer like Appsealing so that everything will be proficiently sorted out and further, there will be no scope of any kind of mistake. Hijacking attacks in this particular case will be eliminated and everyone will be able to provide protection during the runtime of the applications without any problem. Needless to say, Strandhogg will be very well representing a very significant challenge for the android banking users which is the main reason that people need to take it seriously and resolve the issue as soon as possible with the consultancy of the experts.