S0440: Agent Smith
Agent Smith is mobile malware that generates financial gain by replacing legitimate applications on devices with malicious versions that include fraudulent ads. As of July 2019 Agent Smith had infected around 25 million devices, primarily targeting India though effects had been observed in other Asian countries as well as Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[1]
Security context for executives and security teams
S0440: Agent Smith describes [Agent Smith](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0440) is mobile malware that generates financial gain by replacing legitimate applications on devices with malicious versions that include fraudulent ads. As of July 2019 [Agent Smith](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0440) had infected around 25 million devices, primarily targeting India though effects had been observed in other Asian countries as well as Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.(Citation: CheckPoint Agent Smith)
Executive priority
S0440: Agent Smith is an official MITRE ATT&CK software. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate S0440: Agent Smith by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (Android), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether S0440: Agent Smith appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Agent Smith
Agent Smith is mobile malware that generates financial gain by replacing legitimate applications on devices with malicious versions that include fraudulent ads. As of July 2019 Agent Smith had infected around 25 million devices, primarily targeting India though effects had been observed in other Asian countries as well as Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[1]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | T1643 | Generate Traffic from Victim | Agent Smith shows fraudulent ads to generate revenue.[1] |
| Mobile | T1424 | Process Discovery | Agent Smith checks if a targeted application is running in user-space prior to infection.[1] |
| Mobile | T1418 | Software Discovery | Agent Smith obtains the device’s application list.[1] |
| Mobile | T1628.001 | Suppress Application IconSub-technique | Agent Smith can hide its icon from the application launcher.[1] |
| Mobile | T1630.002 | File DeletionSub-technique | Agent Smith deletes infected applications’ update packages when they are detected on the system, preventing updates.[1] |
| Mobile | T1404 | Exploitation for Privilege Escalation | Agent Smith exploits known OS vulnerabilities, including Janus, to replace legitimate applications with malicious versions.[1] |
| Mobile | T1655.001 | Match Legitimate Name or LocationSub-technique | Agent Smith can impersonate any popular application on an infected device, and the core malware disguises itself as a legitimate Google application. Agent Smith's dropper is a weaponized legitimate Feng Shui Bundle.[1] |
| Mobile | T1577 | Compromise Application Executable | Agent Smith can inject fraudulent ad modules into existing applications on a device.[1] |
| Mobile | T1406.001 | SteganographySub-technique | Agent Smith’s core malware is disguised as a JPG file, and encrypted with an XOR cipher.[1] |
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Current bundle | 4295d68885c5… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | 4295d68885c5… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]CheckPoint Agent Smith
A. Hazum, F. He, I. Marom, B. Melnykov, A. Polkovnichenko. (2019, July 10). Agent Smith: A New Species of Mobile Malware. Retrieved May 7, 2020.
Open source URL - [2]mitre-attackS0440Open source URL
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