Governments determine dozens of Android applications covered with spyware

A coalition of governments has published a list of legitimate Android applications that were actually spying programs, and used to target civil society that may oppose the interests of the state in China.

On Tuesday, the National Cyber ​​Security Center in the United Kingdom, or NCSC, is part of the GchQ intelligence agency, along with government agencies from Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, sporadic Consulting On two families of spyware, known as Badbazaar and Moonshine.

NCSC wrote in a press release on Wednesday, these spying are hiding within the legitimate Android applications, which are mainly working as “Trojan” harmful programs, with monitoring capabilities such as the ability to access phone cameras, microphone, chats, photos and site data.

Badbazaar and Moonshine, which was analyzed by cyber security companies such as I noticeand Micro directionAnd VolkswagenAs well as digital non -profit rights Citizen LaboratoryIt was used to target Uygur, Tibetans and Taiwanese societies, as well as civil society groups, according to NCSC.

Ouigor is a large -scale Muslim group in China for years Endowment of detentionMonitoring and discrimination from the Chinese government, and therefore it has often has He was the goal to the pirate Campaigns.

NCSC said on Wednesday: “Applications specifically target individuals at the international level who are associated with the topics that the Chinese state considers a threat to its stability, with some design to attract victims directly or imitate popular applications,” NCSC said on Wednesday. “Among the most at risk individuals is any person associated with: Taiwanese independence; Tibetan rights; Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in or from the Chinese Xinjiang Ouigor region; call for democracy, including Hong Kong, and the spiritual Fallon Gong.”

In one of the two documents published by NCSC on Wednesday, there is a list of harmful applications, which includes more than 100 Android applications as a Muslim and Buddhist prayer layers, chat applications such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, and other famous applications such as Adobe Acrobat PDF, as well as interest applications.

NCSC also mentions one iOS app called Tibetone, which was included in the Apple App Store in 2021.

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