APKatche Me If You Can Uncovering Obfuscation-as-a-Service for Malicious Android Applications
Masarah Paquet-Clouston 🗣 | Vit Šembera 🗣 | Maria Jose Erquiaga | Sebastián García
Hide away! A well-obfuscated malicious application can run on a device for a long time without detection, avoiding the-cat-and-mouse race between attackers and defenders. Still, how easy is it to protect an application from antivirus detection? Are attackers winning the race? We encountered a specialized service that offered protection of Android applications when investigating malicious actors involved in a Russian Android botnet. We seized this unique opportunity and plunged into a deep technical investigation that shed light into the automatic operations of malware protection services and the revenues and capabilities of the people managing them.