Mandrake Espionage Platform Selects Android Devices for Exploitation

Security researchers observed the newly documented Mandrake espionage platform carefully selecting Android devices for further exploitation.

Bitdefender discovered Mandrake in early 2020 while the espionage platform was in the process of conducting phishing attacks against cryptocurrency wallet applications, mobile banking programs and other financial software on Android devices. The security firm subsequently analyzed the threat and found that it had been in circulation since 2016.

In its analysis, Bitdefender found that the espionage platform selected just a handful of Android devices for further exploitation. It then used manipulation tactics, including disguising a series of powerful permission requests as an end-user license agreement, to infect those selected devices. Those rights gave the threat the ability to steal credentials, exfiltrate data and conduct secondary phishing attacks on compromised devices.

Not the Only Threat to Target Android Devices in Recent Years

Mandrake is not the only sophisticated threat that has targeted Android users. Back in 2018, for instance, Wandera spotted an Android malware family called “RedDrop” using sophisticated techniques to collect a vast amount of information from an infected device.

In March 2019, Security Without Borders uncovered “Exodus,” an Android spyware platform that targeted primarily Italian users with extensive surveillance and data-collection capabilities. More recently in April 2020, Kaspersky Lab discovered several overlaps between the “PhantomLance” operation and other attack campaigns conducted by the OceanLotus group.

How to Defend Against Mandrake

Security professionals can help defend their organizations against espionage platforms such as Mandrake by enforcing security policies that limit the types of apps that users can install on their work devices. Those policies should specifically restrict allowable installations to apps from trusted developers on official app marketplaces that have been vetted by the security team. Additionally, infosec personnel should invest in a mobile device management (MDM) solution that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and other tools to scan for sophisticated threat behaviors.

David Bisson

Contributing Editor

NIST’s role in the global tech race against AI

4 min read - Last year, the United States Secretary of Commerce announced that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been put in charge of launching a new public working group on artificial intelligence (AI) that will build on the success of the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to address this rapidly advancing technology.However, recent budget cuts at NIST, along with a lack of strategy implementation, have called into question the agency’s ability to lead this critical effort. Ultimately, the success…

Researchers develop malicious AI ‘worm’ targeting generative AI systems

2 min read - Researchers have created a new, never-seen-before kind of malware they call the "Morris II" worm, which uses popular AI services to spread itself, infect new systems and steal data. The name references the original Morris computer worm that wreaked havoc on the internet in 1988.The worm demonstrates the potential dangers of AI security threats and creates a new urgency around securing AI models.New worm utilizes adversarial self-replicating promptThe researchers from Cornell Tech, the Israel Institute of Technology and Intuit, used what’s…

Passwords, passkeys and familiarity bias

5 min read - As passkey (passwordless authentication) adoption proceeds, misconceptions abound. There appears to be a widespread impression that passkeys may be more convenient and less secure than passwords. The reality is that they are both more secure and more convenient — possibly a first in cybersecurity.Most of us could be forgiven for not realizing passwordless authentication is more secure than passwords. Thinking back to the first couple of use cases I was exposed to — a phone operating system (OS) and a…

Security Intelligence

{{title}}

{{title}}

{{title}}

Topics

Not the Only Threat to Target Android Devices in Recent Years

How to Defend Against Mandrake

More from

NIST’s role in the global tech race against AI

Researchers develop malicious AI ‘worm’ targeting generative AI systems

Passwords, passkeys and familiarity bias

Topic updates