Facebook Detects 400 Android and iOS Apps Stealing Users Log-in Credentials

Oct 7, 2022

Meta Platforms on Friday disclosed that it had identified over
400 malicious apps on Android and iOS that it said targeted online
users with the goal of stealing their Facebook login
information.

“These apps were listed on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App
Store and disguised as photo editors, games, VPN services, business
apps, and other utilities to trick people into downloading them,”
the social media behemoth said ^[1]
in a report shared with The Hacker News.

42.6% of the rogue apps were photo editors, followed by business
utilities (15.4%), phone utilities (14.1%), games (11.7%), VPNs
(11.7%), and lifestyle apps (4.4%). Interestingly, a majority of
the iOS apps posed as ads manager tools for Meta and its Facebook
subsidiary.

Besides concealing its malicious nature as a set of seemingly
harmless apps, the operators of the scheme also published fake
reviews that were designed to offset the negative reviews left by
users who may have previously downloaded the apps.

The apps ultimately functioned as a means to steal the
credentials entered by users by displaying a “Login With Facebook”
prompt.

“If the login information is stolen, attackers could potentially
gain full access to a person’s account and do things like message
their friends or access private information,” the company said.

All the apps in question have been taken down from both app
stores. The list of 403 apps (356 Android and 47 iOS apps) can be
accessed here ^[2].

As always with apps like these, it’s essential to exercise
caution before downloading apps and granting access to Facebook to
access the promised functionality. This includes scrutinizing app
permissions and reviews, and also verifying the authenticity of the
app developers.

The disclosure also comes as Meta-owned WhatsApp filed a lawsuit ^[3] against three companies
based in China and Taiwan for allegedly misleading over a million
users into compromising their own accounts by distributing bogus versions ^[4] of the messaging
app.

References

^{^}
said
(about.fb.com)
^{^}
here
(github.com)
^{^}
filed a lawsuit
(www.law360.com)
^{^}
bogus versions
(twitter.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Facebook Detects 400 Android and iOS Apps Stealing Users Log-in Credentials

References

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