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TapTrap: Animation‑Driven Tapjacking on Android(taptrap.click)
86 points by Bogdanp 4 days ago | 13 comments
  • user_78324 days ago

    > If you use an Android phone and haven’t disabled system animations, then yes, you’re likely affected. iPhone users are not affected.

    Okay... that was much worse than I expected. Looks like you can get the victim to click anywhere, which looks bad. I thought Android had protections against this?

    > It is based on transition animations instead of overlays, so it doesn’t need special permissions and isn’t blocked by Android’s overlay protections.

    Oh well. Not sure how that slipped past.

  • svpk3 days ago

    GrapheneOS resolved this a while ago. Which shows google and other android vendors could have resolved this quickly if they were motivated too.

    https://bsky.app/profile/minimalblue.bsky.social/post/3lul6i...

  • qbane4 days ago

    This has a long history dating back to the Flash era.

    https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/Clickjacking

    > One of the most notorious examples of Clickjacking was an attack against the Adobe Flash plugin settings page. By loading this page into an invisible iframe, an attacker could trick a user into altering the security settings of Flash, giving permission for any Flash animation to utilize the computer’s microphone and camera.

  • tehwebguy4 days ago

    > independently and confidentially reported by @MG193_7 (ByteDance IES RedTeam) to the Android Security Team in early 2023

    I wonder if this is in the wild anywhere, it has to be after 2.5 years right?

  • _vere4 days ago

    Actually insane that this isn't patched in AOSP yet, literally the only android devices that aren't vulnerable are those running graphene. For companies as big as google, there really ought to be just disgusting financial penalties if they leave something like this unfixed for this amount of time.

  • altfredd4 days ago

    This might be somewhat less threatening then it sounds, because it requires caller to fully control animations used for entering the targeted Activity.

    In particular, this vulnerability might not overcome root permission prompts on rooted devices, because their windows are launched and controlled by the installed su app, not by attacker.

  • SoftTalker4 days ago

    Another reason not to install random apps.

    • subscribed4 days ago |parent

      You probably forgot about multiple instances of malware found in the official Google Play store.

      • master-lincoln3 days ago |parent

        What makes you think so? Apps in the Google Play store could be called random apps too. I guess the poster was more leaning towards trusting the developer of an app.

      • SoftTalker3 days ago |parent

        I include most of Play Store apps in my definition of "random apps." If it's not from a very mainstream publisher I won't install it.

  • chasing0entropy3 days ago

    C'mon guys, Google hasn't neglected patching this for years because it would conflict with their own software's behavior, right?

    Right?

    • trehalose3 days ago |parent

      I fully share your distrust of Google, and I think it's unforgivable that they still haven't patched it, yet it's not obvious to me what of their own software would rely on it not being patched? (Are you suggesting Google exploits this vulnerability themself? That seems unlikely to me--they can make their own operating system do whatever evil they want it to; why would they need to trick the user into doing it for them?)

  • wiseowise4 days ago

    Sleek website.