Safeguarding Android Users From Zero-Day Attacks

The term “zero-day” refers to newly found security flaws that hackers can exploit to attack systems. It refers to the fact that the vendor or developer only recently discovered the fault, leaving them with “zero days” to repair it. A zero-day attack is when a zero-day exploit is used to harm or steal data from a system that has been exposed to a vulnerability.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) is always on the lookout for zero-day exploits. In 2021, it revealed nine zero-day exploits impacting Chrome, Android, Apple, and Microsoft, resulting in updates to safeguard consumers. Google believes that these attacks were bundled by a single commercial monitoring firm called Cytrox.

Cytrox is a North Macedonian firm with offices in Israel and Hungary that was exposed in late 2021 as the creator and maintainer of the spyware “Predator”. 

According to new Google research, Cytrox offers new exploits to government-backed actors, who subsequently deploy them in three separate attack campaigns. Egypt, Armenia, Greece, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire, Serbia, Spain, and Indonesia are among the actors who purchased Cytrox services. 

The hackers take advantage of the time differential between when some significant problems were patched but not identified as security issues and when these fixes were fully propagated across the Android ecosystem, us

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