Governments identify dozens of Android applications connected to Spyware

A coalition of governments has published a list of Android legal applications that were actually spyware and is used to target civil society that can oppose China’s state interests.

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom’s National Security Center of the United Kingdom or NCSC, which is part of GCHQ Information Service, along with government services from Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, were published separate advice In two Spyware families, known as Badbazaar and Moonshine.

These two spywares hid in legitimate Android applications, acting essentially as malware “Trojan”, with surveillance capabilities, such as access to cameras, microphone, conversations, photos and location data, NCSC wrote in a press release on Wednesday.

Badbazaar and Moonshine, which have been previously analyzed by cyber security companies Stand-by; Tension; Atrocityas well as non -profit digital rights CitizenThey were used to target Uyghurs, Tibetans and Taiwan communities, as well as civil society groups, according to the NCSC.

Uyghurs is a group of Muslim minority mainly in China that has been tackling, surveillance and distinction from the Chinese government for years and is often a hacking campaigns.

“Applications specifically target people internationally, which are linked to issues considered by the Chinese state to be a threat to its stability, with some attracting directly to victims or imitating popular applications,” the NCSC said on Wednesday. “People who are more at risk include anyone linked to Taiwan’s independence, Tibetan rights, Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in the autonomous region of China Xinjiang Uyghur, the defense of the Republic, including Hong Kong and the Spiritual movement.”

In one of the two documents published by NCSC on Wednesday, there is a list of malicious applications, which includes more than 100 Android applications disguised as Muslim and Buddhist prayer applications, conversation applications such as signal, telegram and Whatsapp and other popular applications such as Adobe Acrobat PDF

NCSC also reports an iOS application called Tibetone, which was listed on the Apple App Store in 2021.

Google and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comments.