spyware

shopping-app-temu-is-“dangerous-malware,”-spying-on-your-texts,-lawsuit-claims

Shopping app Temu is “dangerous malware,” spying on your texts, lawsuit claims

Amazon, data privacy, deceptive trade, e-commerce, malware, online marketplace, Online Privacy, online shopping app, Policy, spyware, temu / /

“Cleverly hidden spyware” —

Temu “surprised” by the lawsuit, plans to “vigorously defend” itself.

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A person is holding a package from Temu.

Enlarge / A person is holding a package from Temu.

Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is “dangerous malware” that’s secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Griffin cited research and media reports exposing Temu’s allegedly nefarious design, which “purposely” allows Temu to “gain unrestricted access to a user’s phone operating system, including, but not limited to, a user’s camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents, and other applications.”

“Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users,” Griffin’s complaint said. “Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place.”

Griffin fears that Temu is capable of accessing virtually all data on a person’s phone, exposing both users and non-users to extreme privacy and security risks. It appears that anyone texting or emailing someone with the shopping app installed risks Temu accessing private data, Griffin’s suit claimed, which Temu then allegedly monetizes by selling it to third parties, “profiting at the direct expense” of users’ privacy rights.

“Compounding” risks is the possibility that Temu’s Chinese owners, PDD Holdings, are legally obligated to share data with the Chinese government, the lawsuit said, due to Chinese “laws that mandate secret cooperation with China’s intelligence apparatus regardless of any data protection guarantees existing in the United States.”

Griffin’s suit cited an extensive forensic investigation into Temu by Grizzly Research—which analyzes publicly traded companies to inform investors—last September. In their report, Grizzly Research alleged that PDD Holdings is a “fraudulent company” and that “Temu is cleverly hidden spyware that poses an urgent security threat to United States national interests.”

As Griffin sees it, Temu baits users with misleading promises of discounted, quality goods, angling to get access to as much user data as possible by adding addictive features that keep users logged in, like spinning a wheel for deals. Meanwhile hundreds of complaints to the Better Business Bureau showed that Temu’s goods are actually low-quality, Griffin alleged, apparently supporting his claim that Temu’s end goal isn’t to be the world’s biggest shopping platform but to steal data.

Investigators agreed, the lawsuit said, concluding “we strongly suspect that Temu is already, or intends to, illegally sell stolen data from Western country customers to sustain a business model that is otherwise doomed for failure.”

Seeking an injunction to stop Temu from allegedly spying on users, Griffin is hoping a jury will find that Temu’s alleged practices violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (ADTPA) and the Arkansas Personal Information Protection Act. If Temu loses, it could be on the hook for $10,000 per violation of the ADTPA and ordered to disgorge profits from data sales and deceptive sales on the app.

Temu “surprised” by lawsuit

The company that owns Temu, PDD Holdings, was founded in 2015 by a former Google employee, Colin Huang. It was originally based in China, but after security concerns were raised, the company relocated its “principal executive offices” to Ireland, Griffin’s complaint said. This, Griffin suggested, was intended to distance the company from debate over national security risks posed by China, but because the majority of its business operations remain in China, risks allegedly remain.

PDD Holdings’ relocation came amid heightened scrutiny of Pinduoduo, the Chinese app on which Temu’s shopping platform is based. Last year, Pinduoduo came under fire for privacy and security risks that got the app suspended from Google Play as suspected malware. Experts said Pinduoduo took security and privacy risks “to the next level,” the lawsuit said. And “around the same time,” Apple’s App Store also flagged Temu’s data privacy terms as misleading, further heightening scrutiny of two of PDD Holdings’ biggest apps, the complaint noted.

Researchers found that Pinduoduo “was programmed to bypass users’ cell phone security in order to monitor activities on other apps, check notifications, read private messages, and change settings,” the lawsuit said. “It also could spy on competitors by tracking activity on other shopping apps and getting information from them,” as well as “run in the background and prevent itself from being uninstalled.” The motivation behind the malicious design was apparently “to boost sales.”

According to Griffin, the same concerns that got Pinduoduo suspended last year remain today for Temu users, but the App Store and Google Play have allegedly failed to take action to prevent unauthorized access to user data. Within a year of Temu’s launch, the “same software engineers and product managers who developed Pinduoduo” allegedly “were transitioned to working on the Temu app.”

Google and Apple did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

A Temu spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, discrediting Grizzly Research’s investigation and confirming that the company was “surprised and disappointed by the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office for filing the lawsuit without any independent fact-finding.”

“The allegations in the lawsuit are based on misinformation circulated online, primarily from a short-seller, and are totally unfounded,” Temu’s spokesperson said. “We categorically deny the allegations and will vigorously defend ourselves.”

While Temu plans to defend against claims, the company also seems to potentially be open to making changes based on criticism lobbed in Griffin’s complaint.

“We understand that as a new company with an innovative supply chain model, some may misunderstand us at first glance and not welcome us,” Temu’s spokesperson said. “We are committed to the long-term and believe that scrutiny will ultimately benefit our development. We are confident that our actions and contributions to the community will speak for themselves over time.”

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WhatsApp finally forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

Israel, malware, Meta, nso group, pegasus, pegasus spyware, Policy, spyware, whatsapp / /

In on the secret —

Israeli spyware maker loses fight to only share information on installation.

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WhatsApp finally forces Pegasus spyware maker to share its secret code

WhatsApp will soon be granted access to explore the “full functionality” of the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware—sophisticated malware the Israeli Ministry of Defense has long guarded as a “highly sought” state secret, The Guardian reported.

Since 2019, WhatsApp has pushed for access to the NSO’s spyware code after alleging that Pegasus was used to spy on 1,400 WhatsApp users over a two-week period, gaining unauthorized access to their sensitive data, including encrypted messages. WhatsApp suing the NSO, Ars noted at the time, was “an unprecedented legal action” that took “aim at the unregulated industry that sells sophisticated malware services to governments around the world.”

Initially, the NSO sought to block all discovery in the lawsuit “due to various US and Israeli restrictions,” but that blanket request was denied. Then, last week, the NSO lost another fight to keep WhatsApp away from its secret code.

As the court considered each side’s motions to compel discovery, a US district judge, Phyllis Hamilton, rejected the NSO’s argument that it should only be required to hand over information about Pegasus’ installation layer.

Hamilton sided with WhatsApp, granting the Meta-owned app’s request for “information concerning the full functionality of the relevant spyware,” writing that “information showing the functionality of only the installation layer of the relevant spyware would not allow plaintiffs to understand how the relevant spyware performs the functions of accessing and extracting data.”

WhatsApp has alleged that Pegasus can “intercept communications sent to and from a device, including communications over iMessage, Skype, Telegram, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and others” and that it could also be “customized for different purposes, including to intercept communications, capture screenshots, and exfiltrate browser history.”

To prove this, WhatsApp needs access to “all relevant spyware”—specifically “any NSO spyware targeting or directed at WhatsApp servers, or using WhatsApp in any way to access Target Devices”—for “a period of one year before the alleged attack to one year after the alleged attack,” Hamilton concluded.

The NSO has so far not commented on the order, but WhatsApp was pleased with this outcome.

“The recent court ruling is an important milestone in our long running goal of protecting WhatsApp users against unlawful attacks,” WhatsApp’s spokesperson told The Guardian. “Spyware companies and other malicious actors need to understand they can be caught and will not be able to ignore the law.”

But Hamilton did not grant all of WhatsApp’s requests for discovery, sparing the NSO from sharing specific information regarding its server architecture because WhatsApp “would be able to glean the same information from the full functionality of the alleged spyware.”

Perhaps more significantly, the NSO also won’t be compelled to identify its clients. While the NSO does not publicly name the governments that purchase its spyware, reports indicate that Poland, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, India, Hungary, and the United Arab Emirates have used it to target dissidents, The Guardian reported. In 2021, the US blacklisted the NSO for allegedly spreading “digital tools used for repression.”

In the same order, Hamilton also denied the NSO’s request to compel WhatsApp to share its post-complaint communications with the Citizen Lab, which served as a third-party witness in the case to support WhatsApp’s argument that “Pegasus is misused by NSO’s customers against ‘civil society.’”

It appeared that the NSO sought WhatsApp’s post-complaint communications with Citizen Lab as a way to potentially pressure WhatsApp into dropping Citizen Lab’s statement from the record. Hamilton quoted a court filing from the NSO that curiously noted: “If plaintiffs would agree to withdraw from their case Citizen Lab’s contention that Pegasus was used against members of ‘civil society’ rather than to investigate terrorism and serious crime, there would be much less need for this discovery.”

Ultimately, Hamilton denied the NSO’s request because “the court fails to see the relevance of the requested discovery.”

As discovery in the case proceeds, the court expects to receive expert disclosures from each side on August 30 before the trial, which is expected to start on March 3, 2025.

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4-year campaign backdoored iPhones using possibly the most advanced exploit ever

0day, Apple, Biz & IT, iPhones, malware, operation triangulation, Security, spyware / /

NO ORDINARY VULNERABILITY —

“Triangulation” infected dozens of iPhones belonging to employees of Moscow-based Kaspersky.

iphone with text background

Researchers on Wednesday presented intriguing new findings surrounding an attack that over four years backdoored dozens if not thousands of iPhones, many of which belonged to employees of Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky. Chief among the discoveries: the unknown attackers were able to achieve an unprecedented level of access by exploiting a vulnerability in an undocumented hardware feature that few if anyone outside of Apple and chip suppliers such as ARM Holdings knew of.

“The exploit’s sophistication and the feature’s obscurity suggest the attackers had advanced technical capabilities,” Kaspersky researcher Boris Larin wrote in an email. “Our analysis hasn’t revealed how they became aware of this feature, but we’re exploring all possibilities, including accidental disclosure in past firmware or source code releases. They may also have stumbled upon it through hardware reverse engineering.”

Four zero-days exploited for years

Other questions remain unanswered, wrote Larin, even after about 12 months of intensive investigation. Besides how the attackers learned of the hardware feature, the researchers still don’t know what, precisely, its purpose is. Also unknown is if the feature is a native part of the iPhone or enabled by a third-party hardware component such as ARM’s CoreSight

The mass backdooring campaign, which according to Russian officials also infected the iPhones of thousands of people working inside diplomatic missions and embassies in Russia, according to Russian government officials, came to light in June. Over a span of at least four years, Kaspersky said, the infections were delivered in iMessage texts that installed malware through a complex exploit chain without requiring the receiver to take any action.

With that, the devices were infected with full-featured spyware that, among other things, transmitted microphone recordings, photos, geolocation, and other sensitive data to attacker-controlled servers. Although infections didn’t survive a reboot, the unknown attackers kept their campaign alive simply by sending devices a new malicious iMessage text shortly after devices were restarted.

A fresh infusion of details disclosed Wednesday said that “Triangulation”—the name Kaspersky gave to both the malware and the campaign that installed it—exploited four critical zero-day vulnerabilities, meaning serious programming flaws that were known to the attackers before they were known to Apple. The company has since patched all four of the vulnerabilities, which are tracked as:

Besides affecting iPhones, these critical zero-days and the secret hardware function resided in Macs, iPods, iPads, Apple TVs, and Apple Watches. What’s more, the exploits Kaspersky recovered were intentionally developed to work on those devices as well. Apple has patched those platforms as well. Apple declined to comment for this article.

Detecting infections is extremely challenging, even for people with advanced forensic expertise. For those who want to try, a list of Internet addresses, files, and other indicators of compromise is here.

Mystery iPhone function proves pivotal to Triangulation’s success

The most intriguing new detail is the targeting of the heretofore-unknown hardware feature, which proved to be pivotal to the Operation Triangulation campaign. A zero-day in the feature allowed the attackers to bypass advanced hardware-based memory protections designed to safeguard device system integrity even after an attacker gained the ability to tamper with memory of the underlying kernel. On most other platforms, once attackers successfully exploit a kernel vulnerability they have full control of the compromised system.

On Apple devices equipped with these protections, such attackers are still unable to perform key post-exploitation techniques such as injecting malicious code into other processes, or modifying kernel code or sensitive kernel data. This powerful protection was bypassed by exploiting a vulnerability in the secret function. The protection, which has rarely been defeated in exploits found to date, is also present in Apple’s M1 and M2 CPUs.

Kaspersky researchers learned of the secret hardware function only after months of extensive reverse engineering of devices that had been infected with Triangulation. In the course, the researchers’ attention was drawn to what are known as hardware registers, which provide memory addresses for CPUs to interact with peripheral components such as USBs, memory controllers, and GPUs. MMIOs, short for Memory-mapped Input/Outputs, allow the CPU to write to the specific hardware register of a specific peripheral device.

The researchers found that several of MMIO addresses the attackers used to bypass the memory protections weren’t identified in any so-called device tree, a machine-readable description of a particular set of hardware that can be helpful to reverse engineers. Even after the researchers further scoured source codes, kernel images, and firmware, they were still unable to find any mention of the MMIO addresses.

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