Everything you need to know about the vulnerability named Strandhogg

Researchers in the city of Norway have very well discovered that android vulnerability which can be exploited to any extent in terms of stealing the application data is the Strandhogg. This has been derived from the old NORSE language which is directly associated with attacking livestock and capturing them or the indigenous people who can be used as slaves in the long run. This particular problem was detected in the year December 2019 by a European security company which was working in the financial sector. This particular company very well noticed that money was randomly disappearing from the bank accounts of different customers of different banks in the city. Researchers very well say that this particular vulnerability will be allowing the attackers to launch different kinds of sophisticated attacks without any requirement for the device to be rooted at any point in time. They even say that exploitation of the operating system control setting in this particular case can be easily done in terms of launching the attacks which are directly associated with the concept of task affinity.

Approximately more than the top 500 applications are consistently at risk of this particular problem which very well means that approximately all of the android ecosystem applications are vulnerable. What makes this particular problem unique is that it will never be requiring any kind of routing of the device to perform the sophisticated attacks and ultimately never requires any kind of specific permission in comparison to a normal application. So, the vulnerability can be easily exploited by the attacker because it will be allowing them to cover up their application with any other kind of tested System in the whole process. This particular attack will also be providing the malicious people with the opportunity of performing the privilege escalation by taking the user into granting permission which they usually do not allow for example reading text messages, checking out the location data, listening to phone calls and other associated things which could be very much problematic.

Even the governments are taking complete notice of this particular problem and India is the second country with the highest number of smartphone users after the nation named China. The overall penetration of this particular system is consistently increasing day by day which is ultimately a very important threat to be paid attention to on the behalf of nations like India.

How will be the Strandhogg working?

According to the researchers basically, this is a concept that will be working and happening during the technicality of multitasking specifically when the person will be switching between different tasks and procedures for different kinds of applications and operations. Android operating system in this particular case will be using the technique named task repainting which will be diverting the power of the processor to the application which is currently being used on the screen. It will be based upon the user tapping on the genuine application but the malicious coding will become active at the same point of time and ultimately people will not be able to judge if they are using the wrong application or the right one. Concerned people also say that this particular vulnerability never requires any kind of routing access to the device and will be working on all of the versions of the Android operating system without any additional provisions in the whole system. According to the researcher such applications are also being distributed through the Google play store with the help of downloads or applications which could be very much problematic in the whole process if not paid attention to. The searches are very well discovered 36 malicious applications with the help of Strandhogg vulnerabilities that are being distributed on the play store and ultimately, they have been removed from the App Store. Researchers are also providing real evidence of the attacking systems in this particular case associated with vulnerability and also or causing serious damage, especially to the mobile banking user in one case. This aspect is directly associated with dealing with multiple credentials in the whole process so that targeting the banking application will be done without any kind of problem.

How to detect the Strandhogg attack?

Some of the researchers have claimed that practically it is impossible to detect this particular attack by any kind of regular user because there is no effective way of identifying or blocking it. So, it is very much important for people to be clear about the targeted element in this particular case which could notice different kinds of discrepancies and ultimately will be able to face difficulty in terms of logging in which actually was not prevailing before. So, having a good idea about any kind of unexpected behaviour is very much important because people can get suspicious at this particular point in time. Apart from this any kind of typographical errors or mistakes in spelling also causes suspicion which is the main reason that people need to retrieve the basic task information throughout the process to avoid any kind of problem. This concept is very much important to be paid attention to because even if the user is thinking that they are stuck in any kind of scenario associated with Strandhogg they can always go for factory resetting the device. Setting it up as brand advice will be definitely a good idea rather than restoring a laptop backup because in this case there will be no scope for any kind of issues.

One of the best possible ways of dealing with this particular system is to use the mobile application security layer, for example, Appsealing which will be definitely at the forefront in terms of providing people with a significant amount of protection during the runtime of the applications. In this particular case, people will be able to have good definition information from the fix film and further will be helpful in making sure the real charges will be eliminated in the whole process very easily. Hence, depending on the experts of the industry like Appsealing is definitely a great idea so that safe as possible assistance will be implemented throughout the process.