“The open ADB port plays the central role,” Plume researcher Gergely Eberhardt wrote in an email. “Combined with root access, a single pm install command can silently install any APK. This bypasses every one of Android’s default protections at once: signature verification, the “unknown sources” restriction, the permission-review dialog, and Play Protect scanning.”
Intruders at gates
The open ADB, along with the default presence of apps that have built-in proxy functionality, creates a dangerous mix that makes SuperBox a potent threat.
“This combination results in further infections involving additional residential proxies or IoT botnets, and the attackers are often the very customers of the primary proxy network,” Plume wrote. “The device owners get multiple bots they never asked for and are not aware of, all competing for the same hardware, and an IP address whose reputation now reflects whatever those bots utilize it for.”
Some of the proxy networking services that make use of SuperBox take measures to prevent their customers from accessing the local networks of SuperBox users. The recently disrupted Popanet, for instance, blocks local IP address ranges from outside the local network. Even then, Popanet users can access local IPs by specifying the special wildcard address 0.0.0.0, which Android then routes to the SuperBox IP 127.0.0.1. From that vantage point, proxy users can access the rest of the local network.
