This Malware Has Been Installed 10 Million Times on Android
Obviously, the Google Play Store is not the place to download apps willy-nilly. Of course, most of the options offered are perfectly safe, but too many malicious applications go unnoticed. A week after we informed you about the recent infection, news has surfaced of yet another batch of apps found to contain malware, and this batch has been downloaded almost 10 million times in total, potentially infecting millions of Android devices . If you have downloaded any of them, delete them immediately.
According to BleepingComputer , the Dr. The Web first reported on these malicious apps by identifying 28 apps in the Play Store containing malware designed to subscribe victims to paid services, hijack social media accounts, and display fraudulent ads. While malware often causes hundreds of thousands of victims, this latter group has been comparatively much more “successful”, celebrating millions upon millions of downloads.
The “best” malware is insidious and insidious, and this batch of malware is no different. When you first open one of them after installation, it presents a pop-up asking for permission to always run in the background. If you click “Allow”, the application will be excluded from power saving mode and will continue to work even if you close it. To hide their identity, they either remove their icons from your phone’s app launcher or replace them with system icons. Applications containing malware known as Joker ( which we discussed earlier ) will try to trick you into signing up for paid services without your knowledge.
While Google has already removed most of these apps from the Play Store, two still remain at the time of publication: Water Reminder-Tracker & Reminder by YPC Dev and “Yoga-For Beginner to Advanced” by ALHASSAN, each with over 100,000 downloads. When BleepingComputer published their article, “Neon Theme Keyboard” was also on the air and its name was downloaded over a million times.
Here is the full list of detected malicious applications. If you have any of the following installed on your Android, uninstall them immediately:
- Automatic 4K Wallpaper Changer
- Call Skins – Caller Themes
- Phone Themes Call Me
- Caller Theme
- Caller Theme
- Checkout cleaner
- Emoji Keyboard: Stickers & GIFs
- Fashionable charger
- FastCleaner: Checkout Cleaner
- funny caller
- Funny Wallpaper – Live Screen
- InCall: contact information
- MyCall – personalization of calls
- Neon Theme – Android Keyboard
- neon theme keyboard
- NewScrean: 4D Wallpaper
- Notes – reminders and lists
- Photo editor and Exif
- Photo editor and background eraser
- Photo Editor – Design Creator
- Photo Editor – Filters Effects
- Photo Editor: Image Blur
- Photo Editor: Cut, Paste
- Photo Editor: Artistic Filters
- Photo Editor: Beauty Filter
- Photo editor: retouch and cut
- Photo filters and effects
- Stock wallpapers and backgrounds
How to protect yourself from malware on Android
While there won’t be a warning from Google that an app appears to be malicious, there are signs to watch out for so you don’t fall into the trap.
To get started, take a close look at the app’s page in the Play Store. Is everything well written or well written? Make sure the preview images are high quality and really advertise what the app is supposed to do. You should also look at the reviews and pay attention to the app’s overall rating: if there are a number of bad reviews or five-star reviews that seem fake, that’s a big red flag.
With a million installs, the aforementioned Neon Keyboard app has received an overall rating of 1.8 stars. One review said, “This app killed my phone. It kept crashing, I couldn’t even enter the password to unlock the phone and remove it. In the end, I had to do a full wipe (factory reset) to restore the phone. DO NOT install this app!!!!” This is what they call a red flag.
Another tip is to check the permissions for the app in question: if an app is asking for access to parts of your Android device that it shouldn’t need, that’s a bad sign. The keyboard app doesn’t need access to your location, camera, microphone, and contacts.
In general, make it a habit not to download dubious applications right away. Take your time to read its Play Store page, and only click install if you’re sure everything works.
[ BleepingComputer ]