A new Android backdoor has been discovered with potent capabilities to carry out a range of malicious actions on infected devices.
Dubbed
Xamalicious by the McAfee Mobile Research Team, the malware is so named for the fact that it's developed using an open-source mobile app framework called Xamarin and abuses the operating system's accessibility permissions to fulfill its objectives.
It's also capable of gathering metadata about the compromised device and contacting a command-and-control (C2) server to fetch a second-stage payload, but only after determining if it fits the bill.
The second stage is "dynamically injected as an assembly DLL at runtime level to take full control of the device and potentially perform fraudulent actions such as clicking on ads, installing apps, among other actions financially motivated without user consent," security researcher Fernando Ruiz
said.
