> has already been patched against

... has not been (effectively) patched against, as it happens. Maybe in December!

What I got from the article is the malicious app could read the SMS or email which may contain a 2FA code.

That the app does not require permissions is the notable bit here. I do not know the mobile system, but I thought apps were supposed to be firewalled from each other unless given explicit grants.

The obvious joke, how long has Facebook been using this exploit?

It can happen quickly. The app itself might be legit, but it may be based in a SDK which is either malicious or compromised.

Yes, just because a popular blog about a infamously insecure operating system shrugged off certain classes of security problems as “you’re holding it wrong” two decades ago, OS security should be held to the same standard as that piece of shit OS forever. Nothing to see here.

Edit: IIRC the original argument was more reasonable, but it has since been abused in all kinds of situations to make low effort putdowns, like this one.

It also requires that whatever information the attacker is looking for has been displayed on the screen, so for example my banking app (like most banking apps I guess) masks my 4 digit passcode with asterisks so it is likely safe from this specific attack

PD: I just checked and it also doesn't change the color of the pressed keys or any other visual feedback that an attacker might use.

> The new attack, named Pixnapping by the team of academic researchers who devised it, requires a victim to first install a malicious app on an Android phone or tablet.

I think it speaks about the security of Android that this makes the news. Coming from Windows, Android always felt as a MUCH more secure Operating System, not just a similar quality Operating System with touch controls and support for smaller hardware.

https://0x0.st/XJZT.jpg

In other news, there are substances in the household that are so dangerous that it can can kill you.

First it requires the user take buckets of ammonia and bleach and mix them together.

Unless you social engineer to export the auth code as QR, take a screenshot, extract the secret key which is pretty much in plain bytes and use it to generate TOTP.

There should be a new, stronger word for these kinds of attacks. Like clevevil, or clevil. Yes, pixnapping is clevil. We should strive for the opposite: livelc.

This attack seems to be explicitly exploiting the Android rendering pipeline through a side-channel.

Wayland, once hardened with security-context doesn't directly expose anything worrying (clipboard stealing is possible but would require window focus or the generation of a window which grabs focus). It remains to be seen if there are side-channels hiding somewhere in it or in the various GPU stacks.

Quote:

> Google has attempted to patch Pixnapping by limiting the number of activities an app can invoke blur on. However, we discovered a workaround to make Pixnapping work despite this patch. The workaround is still under embargo.

Great, google's security policy ending up being a zeroday. Exactly as denied and exactly as predicted by the community.

Also, this is the direct paper link: https://www.pixnapping.com/pixnapping.pdf

This really needs to be the link. The article is phrased as if this was a zero day exploiting some kind of 2FA bug, but the actual meat is that it's a novel and really interesting new kind of attack vector (albeit not a particularly practical one) that no one had thought about before.

iOS doesn't let apps silently screen record.

The issue isn't that a trojan gives the attacker access to things they shouldn't have access to, the problem is that android gives the trojan access to things it shouldn't so that the data it collects can be passed back to the attacker.

> requires no [Android] permissions

I think this is the part people are upset about

> Would you buy a hammer that can't ever hurt your thumb?

Yes.

While I appreciate the sentiment of fighting against oversecure features. This is a great security feature. The Windows OS model started development in the 90s, before the internet or even malware was popular. Android started development around 2010 and was able to provide a security design that contemplated risks of malware and internet.

In Windows installing malware compromises other applications, while in Android, your other apps are safe. In this news, this security mechanism fails. To denounce that the mechanism is completely useless is quite stupid, you just outed yourself as someone who doesn't have any security responsibilities and shouldn't have.

> Would that be a good hammer?

They're called rubber mallets and they are useful in a number of situations where you want to

> I would hope a malicious app I willingly installed will be able to behave maliciously.

You should be able to install an app that has continuous access to your screen but that doesn't mean that continuous access to your screen is something you should have to grant to every piece of software that runs on your computer.