![]() As a result, a pop-up of the fake Twitter app appeared on the main screen of the SHAREit app, Duan wrote. Researchers illustrated this action in their POC by manually copying Twitter.apk in the code to replace it with a fake file of the same name. “The folder is an external directory, which means any app can access it with SDcard write permission.” This type of attack allows someone to intercept and potentially alter data as it moves between Android external storage and an installed app, and is possible using SHAREit “because when a user downloads the app in the download center, it goes to the directory,” Duan wrote. SHAREit also is susceptible to an MiTD attack, a variation on a man-in-the-middle attack identified by Check Point in 2018 that arises from the way the Android OS uses two types of storage-internal and external, the latter of which uses a removable SD card and is shared across the OS and all apps. In this way malicious apps installed on a device running SHAREit can run take over the app to run custom code or install third-party apps without the user knowing, researchers found. “In other words, it can be used to overwrite existing files in the SHAREit app,” Duan said of the attack. In Trend Micro’s PoC, researchers included code that reads WebView cookies, which was used to write any files in the SHAREit app’s data folder. “In this case, all files in the /data/data/ folder can be freely accessed.” “Even worse, the developer specified a wide storage area root path,” he wrote. Moreover, third-parties also can gain temporary read/write access to the content provider’s data through a flaw in its FileProvider, Duan wrote. “This shows arbitrary activities, including SHAREit’s internal (non-public) and external app activities.” Researchers built a simple proof of concept (PoC) and found that “any app can invoke this broadcast component,” he said. “It receives the action ‘.install_completed’ and Extra Intent then calls the startActivity() function.” “We delved into the app’s code and found that it declares the broadcast receiver as ‘.DefaultReceiver,'” Duan explained in the post. Trend Micro also notified Google of the app’s issues, which lie in several flaws in its code that too easily give third parties permissions to take over legitimate app features, overwrite existing app files or even take over Android storage shared by multiple apps to execute malicious code, he said. “We decided to disclose our research three months after reporting this since many users might be affected by this attack, because the attacker can steal sensitive data and do anything with the apps’ permission,” Echo Duan, a mobile threats analyst for Trend Micro, wrote in the report. ![]() However, the flaws remain unpatched, according to a report posted online Monday. ![]() They were identified and reported to the app maker three months ago by researchers at Trend Micro. The flaws exist in an app called SHAREit, which allows Android app users to share files between friends or devices. An Android app that’s been downloaded more than 1 billion times is riddled with flaws that can let attackers hijack app features or overwrite existing files to execute malicious code, or launch man-in-the-disk (MiTD) attacks on people’s devices, researchers discovered. ![]()
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