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Diagram from Ovi's report showing the uCreator operator cloud on the left, where an operator or merchant console sends tasks through REST services, Kafka and RocketMQ to an implant fleet of farmed and victim phones running WeChat and WeCom in a VirtualApp sandbox, with a scheduler pacing activity and results flowing back through callbacks, harvest and backup services and databases to an exfiltration bucket.
Diagram: Ovi, 0x0v1, "uCreator: virtualization-based Android spyware platform targeting WeChat, Telegram and other messaging apps," Oct. 21, 2026 (fair use). The operator cloud and device fleet reconstructed from the leaked back end.

Threat Intel

Researcher Ovi Says uCreator, a Rentable Android Spyware Platform Tied to Firms in Hunan, Runs Inside Working Copies of Telegram and WeChat to Lift 2FA Passwords, Hide Its Own Sessions and Clone Accounts

The 0x0v1 report describes a productized kit, rented to merchants and resellers, that injects hook modules into repackaged messaging apps, runs a command server inside each one and paces a fleet of farmed and victim phones so the activity looks human. Its Telegram code matches a backdoor Doctor Web reported in 2025, The Hacker News found.

Priya Shah, Threat IntelSingapore7 min read

SINGAPORE - The Telegram app on the phone works. Messages arrive, the chats are all there and the list of signed-in devices looks normal. According to a new report, that is the point: the copy is a repackaged build carrying a commercial spyware kit that reads the app's database from the inside and can hide the attacker's own session from that list.

Independent researcher Ovi, who publishes as 0x0v1, describes uCreator, a product its makers call YingGai, as a commercial Android surveillance platform rather than a single malware family. In a report published Oct. 21, he lays out a kit built from off-the-shelf parts, LSPatch, the Pine hooking engine and the VirtualApp container, that puts attacker code inside a legitimate app's process while the app runs signed in and trusted by the operating system. He found code supporting about 20 target apps, including WeChat, WeCom, QQ, Telegram, WhatsApp, LINE, Zalo, KakaoTalk, Viber and the GCash and MoMo wallets, and the platform appears aimed at users in China and Southeast Asia.

Ovi stresses that his report measures capability, not victims. He gained access to one command server that held victim-related data, with users apparently in China and the United States, but not enough for a reliable count.

Inside the app, with the app's permissions

For messengers, the kit ships a repackaged copy of the real app with the module merged through LSPatch or loaded from an asset named TgJarPine.dex. For WeChat, it can instead run the untouched app inside a VirtualApp container. Distribution runs through sideloading and social engineering and through the makers' own container app, called Onion Box. The hook code for each target is downloaded after installation from storage buckets with names like Huuk_TG, which leaves the installer itself relatively thin.

Diagram from Ovi's report of the Telegram injection chain: a repackaged Telegram APK loads libpine.so or LSPatch, then assets/TgJarPine.dex, then CompatEngine.init and CommonUc, which fans out to Business hooks including SRPHelper, a syncsocket local HTTP command server and a RedisHelper pub/sub bus.
Diagram: Ovi, 0x0v1, "uCreator: virtualization-based Android spyware platform targeting WeChat, Telegram and other messaging apps," Oct. 21, 2026 (fair use).How the Telegram module gets into the app's process.

Each hooked app stands up a local HTTP command server with about 40 numbered handlers, which an operator reaches through a Redis bus. One handler runs any SQL query the operator supplies against Telegram's own live message store and returns chat history, with no whitelist on the query, Ovi found.

The most serious capability targets Telegram's two-step verification. The module hooks SRPHelper.getX, the routine Telegram calls while computing the login proof for the 2FA cloud password, and copies the password in cleartext before it is hashed. With it, the code can reset the account's sessions, change the linked phone number or delete the account, and dedicated classes support locking the owner out while keeping the attacker's session alive. Ovi cautions that the code shows what the kit can do, not that every step has been used end to end.

Screenshot of decompiled Java code from Ovi's report showing a class named Uc_SRPHelper_GetX that hooks Telegram's SRPHelper getX method, converts the first argument to a string and saves it to preferences under the key password.
Screenshot: Ovi, 0x0v1, decompiled uCreator Telegram module, "uCreator: virtualization-based Android spyware platform targeting WeChat, Telegram and other messaging apps," Oct. 21, 2026 (fair use).The hook that lifts the 2FA password.

A back end rented by the merchant

With help from a second researcher, Jurre, Ovi found that the operators had left one self-hosted GitLab server open while the rest of their infrastructure was restricted to approved IP addresses. It held the back-end source: a multi-tenant cloud console that merchants and resellers rent, with every command stamped with a customer ID so each customer drives its own share of the phone fleet. Commands pass through Kafka and RocketMQ to farmed and victim phones, which capture login authorizations, add friends in bulk, harvest contacts and profiles and back up whole accounts. A scheduler sets hourly windows, random daily caps and per-account budgets so the activity reads as human and gets past platform risk checks, a practice the code calls account cultivation.

The commit history across thirteen repositories names roughly three dozen developers working on China time, some still pushing changes this month, Ovi writes. The leaked back end covers personal WeChat and WeCom; it did not appear to cover the Telegram implant.

Links to a 2025 backdoor and three companies

The Hacker News, comparing reports, found that the Telegram component matches Baohuo, a backdoor Doctor Web described in October 2025 in tampered copies of Telegram X, with the same code namespace, com.ucreator.tgjar, the same command server and matching command names. Doctor Web estimated at the time that more than 58,000 devices were infected. Ovi's report does not mention Doctor Web's findings, and it is not clear whether the kit's makers or a customer ran that campaign.

Ovi ties parts of the operation to three companies in Hunan province through a brand website registration and a server certificate, a government filing for a command server and the code-signing identity on the Windows control program. A shared owner is plausible but unproven, he writes. He assumes the kit serves financially motivated crime, given its focus on wallets and one-time passcodes.

On a Pixel 10 Pro running Android 17, the kit's bundled Pine engine could not find an internal Android function it relies on, but Frida could still hook apps the same way. Ovi treats that as extra work for the makers, not proof that Android 17 blocks the technique. The newest sample he examined, dated July 29, 2026, still carried the old engine.

Diagram from Ovi's report of the raw database request cycle: the operator calls the _4_101 handler, which passes SQL to AbstractUcRawDbRequest, then RequestHelper and Telegram's getMessagesStorage, which reads cache4.db and returns results deserialized as Telegram TL objects.
Diagram: Ovi, 0x0v1, "uCreator: virtualization-based Android spyware platform targeting WeChat, Telegram and other messaging apps," Oct. 21, 2026 (fair use).How an operator's SQL query reaches Telegram's message store.

What defenders can look for

  • On managed Android devices, Telegram, Telegram X or WeChat builds installed outside Google Play, and packages that use the official package name, such as org.thunderdog.challegram, but carry a different signing certificate.
  • Two host-side traces Ovi calls reliable: an asset named TgJarPine.dex inside a Telegram package, and an original app copy under cache/lspatch/origin/ left by LSPatch. The second can also come from benign uses of LSPatch.
  • Network contact with hpncallback.gold5play[.]com, hpncallback.qianxunlbs[.]com, telegram-apk.uzyzx[.]com and hw.android.videoflow[.]cn (121[.]37[.]194[.]194), hook downloads from kfpt.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs[.]com/android/app/YingGai/, the relay 43[.]225[.]141[.]209 and the Redis servers 159[.]138[.]229[.]12 and 159[.]138[.]237[.]10. Several of the callback and download domains no longer resolve.
  • Callback paths beginning /api/callback/Tg, such as TgHeartCallback and TgRegisterLogCallback, in proxy or mobile threat defense logs.
  • File hashes, including the framework com.ucreator.tg, SHA-256 2fc4bad71eda25b9022ea7cb090d6419911ecd67e50e746b418f8a617a980301, and the WeChat host com.ucreator.va_vx, SHA-256 f82ac2c525d1ed82e57b3f27ae689aeda46875a893ca4c42876b3166ba66bb20. The full list is in the report.

Neither Ovi nor Doctor Web says whether a hidden session still shows up on the user's other, untampered Telegram clients, The Hacker News noted, and neither gives steps for recovering an account taken over this way.

Sources:


Priya Shah covers threat intelligence, intrusion analysis, and adversary tradecraft for SOCtember from Singapore.

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