LiveActive security incident?Get immediate response
MITRE ATT&CK® Technique

T1628.001: Suppress Application Icon

A malicious application could suppress its icon from being displayed to the user in the application launcher. This hides the fact that it is installed, and can make it more difficult for the user to uninstall the application. Hiding the application's icon programmatically does not require any special permissions.

This behavior has been seen in the BankBot/Spy Banker family of malware.[1][2][3]

Beginning in Android 10, changes were introduced to inhibit malicious applications’ ability to hide their icon. If an app is a system app, requests no permissions, or does not have a launcher activity, the application’s icon will be fully hidden. Further, if the device is fully managed or the application is in a work profile, the icon will be fully hidden. Otherwise, a synthesized activity is shown, which is a launcher icon that represents the app’s details page in the system settings. If the user clicks the synthesized activity in the launcher, they are taken to the application’s details page in the system settings.[4][5]

MobileT1628.001Sub-techniqueObject v1.1Modified
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

T1628.001: Suppress Application Icon describes A malicious application could suppress its icon from being displayed to the user in the application launcher. This hides the fact that it is installed, and can make it more difficult for the user to uninstall the application. Hiding the application's icon programmatically does not require any special permissions. This behavior has been seen in the BankBot/Spy Banker family of malware.(Citation: android-trojan-steals-paypal-2fa)(Citation: sunny-stolen-credentials)(Citation: bankbot-spybanker) Beginning in Android 10...

Executive priority

T1628.001: Suppress Application Icon is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. 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 T1628.001: Suppress Application Icon by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (defense-evasion), supported platforms (Android), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.

Likely telemetry

  • Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
  • Identity, privilege, and authentication events

Detection direction

  • Validate whether T1628.001: Suppress Application Icon 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.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Suppress Application Icon

A malicious application could suppress its icon from being displayed to the user in the application launcher. This hides the fact that it is installed, and can make it more difficult for the user to uninstall the application. Hiding the application's icon programmatically does not require any special permissions.

This behavior has been seen in the BankBot/Spy Banker family of malware.[1][2][3]

Beginning in Android 10, changes were introduced to inhibit malicious applications’ ability to hide their icon. If an app is a system app, requests no permissions, or does not have a launcher activity, the application’s icon will be fully hidden. Further, if the device is fully managed or the application is in a work profile, the icon will be fully hidden. Otherwise, a synthesized activity is shown, which is a launcher icon that represents the app’s details page in the system settings. If the user clicks the synthesized activity in the launcher, they are taken to the application’s details page in the system settings.[4][5]

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

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.

ATT&CK relationship table

Related techniques

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.

2 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
MobileT1628Hide ArtifactsThis object subtechnique of Hide Artifacts.
MobileT1508Suppress Application IconSuppress Application Icon revoked by this object.
Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

MalwareMobile

S0480: Cerberus

Cerberus is a banking trojan whose usage can be rented on underground forums and marketplaces. Prior to being available to rent, the authors of Cerberus claim was used in private operations for two years.[1]

Android
MalwareMobile

S0655: BusyGasper

BusyGasper is Android spyware that has been in use since May 2016. There have been less than 10 victims, all who appear to be located in Russia, that were all infected via physical access to the device.[1]

Android
MalwareMobile

S0509: FakeSpy

FakeSpy is Android spyware that has been operated by the Chinese threat actor behind the Roaming Mantis campaigns.[1]

Android
MalwareMobile

S0423: Ginp

Ginp is an Android banking trojan that has been used to target Spanish banks. Some of the code was taken directly from Anubis.[1]

Android
MalwareMobile

S1062: S.O.V.A.

S.O.V.A. is an Android banking trojan that was first identified in August 2021 and has subsequently been found in a variety of applications, including banking, cryptocurrency wallet/exchange, and shopping apps. S.O.V.A., which is Russian for "owl", contains features not commonly found in Android malware, such as session cookie theft.[1][2]

Android
MalwareMobile

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]

Android
ToolMobile

S0408: FlexiSpy

FlexiSpy is sophisticated surveillanceware for iOS and Android. Publicly-available, comprehensive analysis has only been found for the Android version.[1][2]

FlexiSpy markets itself as a parental control and employee monitoring application.[3]

Android
MalwareMobile

S0411: Rotexy

Rotexy is an Android banking malware that has evolved over several years. It was originally an SMS spyware Trojan first spotted in October 2014, and since then has evolved to contain more features, including ransomware functionality.[1]

Android
MalwareMobile

S1195: SpyC23

SpyC23 is a mobile malware that has been used by APT-C-23 since at least 2017. SpyC23 has been observed primarily targeting Android devices in the Middle East.[1]

There are multiple close variants of SpyC23, such as VAMP[2], GnatSpy[3], Desert Scorpion and FrozenCell, which add some additional functionality but are not significantly different from the original malware.

Android
Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

Mitigations

Mitigation direction

Change history

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.

ATT&CK release
20.0
Object version
1.1
Created
Modified
Raw hash
ba4190bd3f492666...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(3)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
20.01.1Current bundleba4190bd3f49…
19.21.1Older bundleba4190bd3f49…
19.11.1Older bundleba4190bd3f49…
Raw source

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.

Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    android-trojan-steals-paypal-2fa

    Lukáš Štefanko. (2018, December 11). Android Trojan steals money from PayPal accounts even with 2FA on. Retrieved July 11, 2019.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    sunny-stolen-credentials

    Lukáš Štefanko. (2017, February 22). Sunny with a chance of stolen credentials: Malicious weather app found on Google Play. Retrieved July 11, 2019.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    bankbot-spybanker

    NJCCIC. (2017, March 2). BankBot/Spy Banker. Retrieved September 12, 2024.

    Open source URL
  4. [4]
    Android 10 Limitations to Hiding App Icons

    Android. (n.d.). Android 10 Release Notes: Limitations to hiding app icons. Retrieved March 30, 2022.

    Open source URL
  5. [5]
    LauncherApps getActivityList

    Android. (n.d.). LauncherApps: getActivityList. Retrieved March 30, 2022.

    Open source URL
  6. [6]
    mitre-attackT1628.001
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

Source: MITRE ATT&CK®. © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. Glexia is not affiliated with or endorsed by MITRE.