A novel tapjacking method can exploit consumer interface animations to bypass Android’s permission system and permit entry to delicate information or trick customers into performing damaging actions, akin to wiping the gadget.
In contrast to conventional, overlay-based tapjacking, TapTrap assaults work even with zero-permission apps to launch a innocent clear exercise on prime of a malicious one, a habits that continues to be unmitigated in Android 15 and 16.
TapTrap was developed by a staff of safety researchers at TU Wien and the College of Bayreuth (Philipp Beer, Marco Squarcina, Sebastian Roth, Martina Lindorfer), and will likely be offered subsequent month at the USENIX Safety Symposium.
Nevertheless, the staff has already revealed a technical paper that outlines the assault and a web site that summarizes many of the particulars.
How TapTrap works
TapTrap abuses the best way Android handles exercise transitions with customized animations to create a visible mismatch between what the consumer sees and what the gadget really registers.
A malicious app put in on the goal gadget launches a delicate system display screen (permission immediate, system setting, and so on.) from one other app utilizing ‘startActivity()’ with a customized low-opacity animation.
“The important thing to TapTrap is utilizing an animation that renders the goal exercise practically invisible,” the researchers say on a web site that explains the assault.
“This may be achieved by defining a customized animation with each the beginning and ending opacity (alpha) set to a low worth, akin to 0.01,” thus making the malicious or dangerous exercise nearly fully clear.
“Optionally, a scale animation could be utilized to zoom into a selected UI aspect (e.g., a permission button), making it occupy the total display screen and rising the possibility the consumer will faucet it.”
Supply: taptrap.click on
Though the launched immediate receives all contact occasions, all of the consumer sees is the underlying app that shows its personal UI parts, as on prime of it’s the clear display screen the consumer really engages with.
Pondering they work together with the bening app, a consumer could faucet on particular display screen positions that correspond to dangerous actions, akin to an “Enable” or “Authorize” buttons on practically invisible prompts.
A video launched by the researchers demonstrates how a sport app may leverage TapTrap to allow digicam entry for a web site by way of Chrome browser.
Danger publicity
To examine if TapTrap may work with functions in Play Retailer, the official Android repository, the researchers analyzed near 100,000. They discovered that 76% of them are susceptible to TapTrap as they embrace a display screen (“exercise”) that meets the next circumstances:
- could be launched by one other app
- runs in the identical activity because the calling app
- doesn’t override the transition animation
- doesn’t await the animation to complete earlier than reacting to consumer enter
The researchers say that animations are enabled on the most recent Android model except the consumer disables them from the developer choices or accessibility settings, exposing the units to TapTrap assaults.
Whereas growing the assault, the researchers used Android 15, the most recent model on the time, however after Android 16 got here out in addition they ran some exams on it.
Marco Squarcina advised BleepingComputer that they tried TapTrap on a Google Pixel 8a working Android 16 and so they can verify that the difficulty stays unmitigated.
GrapheneOS, the cellular working system targeted on privateness and safety, additionally confirmed to BleepingComputer that the most recent Android 16 is susceptible to the TapTrap method, and introduced that the their subsequent launch will embrace a repair.
BleepingComputer has contacted Google about TapTrap, and a spokesperson stated that the TapTrap downside will likely be mitigated in a future replace:
“Android is consistently bettering its present mitigations towards tapjacking assaults. We’re conscious of this analysis and we will likely be addressing this subject in a future replace. Google Play has insurance policies in place to maintain customers protected that each one builders should adhere to, and if we discover that an app has violated our insurance policies, we take applicable motion.”- a Google consultant advised BleepingComputer.
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