Skip to main content

Google removes 300 Android apps that secretly hijacked phones for DDoS attacks


Around 300 apps have been withdrawn from Google’s Play Store after they were found to be secretly hijacking Android devices to supply traffic for wide-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, as noted by Gizmodo. Google removed apps that offered services like ringtones and storage managers after security researchers uncovered the “WireX” botnet was behind the ploy. Malware was hidden inside the affected apps, and as long as the device remained switched on it was used in DDoS attacks.
Researchers at cloud services provider Akamai discovered WireX after a hospitality company suffered from a DDoS attack involving hundreds of thousands of IP addresses. DDoS attacks work by overwhelming a target with large amounts of data from multiple IP addresses, and they’re effective at taking down websites and services that can’t cope with a data influx. Google said in a statement it’s currently in the process of removing the malicious apps from affected devices, and some researchers say up to 70,000 devices in 100 countries could be compromised. Some of the WireX attacks also asked for ransom fees.
Researchers from Akami, Cloudflare, Flashpoint, Google, Team Cymru, and others are working together to combat the botnet, which came to their attention on August 17. “Once the larger collaborative effort began, the investigation began to unfold rapidly starting with the investigation of historic log information, which revealed a connection between the attacking IPs and somethingmalicious, possibly running on top of the Android operating system,” the researchers wrote in a joint blog post.
The researchers say organizations should share detailed metrics about DDoS attacks, in an effort to combat and learn more about them. Google is using machine learning to fight problem apps, and in May published a report showing some of its aggressive moves against malicious apps like better patching schedules is starting to pay off.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Google adds Sticker and Bitmoji support to Gboard for Android

Google has officially rolled out Stickers and Bitmoji support for its Gboard app on Android devices. After updating the keyboard app for Android, users will see a new sticker tab in the keyboard next to emojis and GIFs. Users can share the stickers on various apps. The latest Gboard update from  Google  is currently rolling out in phases and will be available for all Android users over the next few days. The stickers and Bitmoji can be downloaded from the play store. Users can insert these stickers or Bitmoji using the latest app into any other app that supports image pasting. “With the latest Gboard for Android update, you can now easily share our new downloadable stickers or Bitmoji in any app that supports image pasting, including your favorite messaging apps on Android ,’’ reads Google’s  blog post . How to get started with the new Gboard To get started with the latest Gboard, make sure you’ve updated to the latest version of the app. After you have update...

Google Chrome Gets New Features To Boost Your Productivity

  Google Chrome browser for desktop snagged a feature update with a bunch of new features tagged in. These new features are completely focused on the productivity of the users and especially students. Check out these new features coming on Chrome.  Google Chrome New Features Tab Groups Source: Google There was a feature called tab groups released not long ago and Google has made improvements to this feature. You could have made groups to before but now you can collapse those groups easily by clicking on the group name. This is really helpful to those who keep a lot of tabs open on their browser. Touch-friendly tabs for tablet Using the Chrome browser on a touch screen device will be much easier as the user interface has been switched to more touch-friendly. There are bigger icons and a better tab organizer which looks better than the normal interface. Preview Tabs Another feature that is in beta is the ability to preview a tab by h...