Governments identify dozens of Android apps bundled with spyware

A coalition of governments has published a list of legitimate-looking Android apps that were actually spyware, and used to target civil society that may oppose China’s state interests. On Tuesday, the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, or NCSC, which is part of intelligence agency GCHQ, along with government agencies from Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United States, published separate advisories on two families of spyware, known as BadBazaar and Moonshine. These two spywares hid inside legitimate-looking Android apps, acting essentially as “trojan” malware, with surveillance capabilities such as the ability to access the phone’s cameras, microphone, chats, photos, and location data, the NCSC wrote in a press release out Wednesday. BadBazaar and Moonshine, which have been previously analyzed by cybersecurity firms like Lookout, Trend Micro, and Volexity, as well as the digital rights nonprofit Citizen Lab, were used to target Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Taiwanese co ... Read full article.