Google Play apps with >20M Downloads Depleted Batteries and Network Bandwidth

[upnorth]

Content source

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/google-play-apps-with-20m-downloads-depleted-batteries-and-network-bandwidth/

Google Play has given the boot to 16 apps with more than 20 million combined installations after researchers detected malicious activity that could cause the Android devices they ran on to drain batteries faster and use more data than normal.

The apps provided legitimate functions, including flashlight, camera, QR reading, and measurement conversions, security firm McAfee said on Wednesday. When opened, however, the apps surreptitiously downloaded additional code that caused them to perform ad fraud. From then on, infected devices received messages through the Google-owned Firebase Cloud Messaging platform that instructed them to open specific web pages in the background and select links to artificially inflate the number of clicks ads received. “Mainly, it is visiting websites which are delivered by FCM message and browsing them successively in the background while mimicking user’s behavior,” McAfee’s SangRyol Ryu wrote. “This may cause heavy network traffic and consume power without user awareness during the time it generates profit for the threat actor behind this malware.”

Google Play apps with >20M downloads depleted batteries and network bandwidth

Google removes 16 apps after receiving a report the apps were committing ad fraud.

arstechnica.com

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Security researchers at McAfee have discovered a set of 16 malicious clicker apps that managed to sneak into Google Play, the official app store for Android.

Clicker apps are a special category of adware that loads ads in invisible frames or in the background and clicks them to generate revenue for their operators.

The effect on the device may be a drop in performance, overheating, increased battery usage, and inflated mobile data charges.

All 16 apps have been removed from Google Play after McAfee reported them. However, they still amassed an install count of 20 million.

The nastiest of the bunch is DxClean, which was installed five million times before it being removed. It had a relatively positive overall user rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars.

DxClean posed as a system cleaner and optimizer, promising to detect causes of system slowdowns and stop advertisement annoyances while performing the exact opposite actions in the background.

For the complete list of the 16 clicker apps, check out the indicators of compromise section at the bottom of McAfee’s report.

Android adware apps in Google Play downloaded over 20 million times

Security researchers at McAfee have discovered a set of 16 malicious clicker apps that managed to sneak into Google Play, the official app store for Android.

www.bleepingcomputer.com