Security News Google Play fails to catch trojan-injected apps (again)

[Winter Soldier]

Getting your Android apps through Google Play is considered safe, but there are times when even the search giant’s store is dangerous. Case in point, Kaspersky uncovered two more trojan-infected apps that weren’t removed until they had over 60,000 installs.

Kaspersky security researcher Roman Unuchek reports that, since September 2016, he has discovered “several dozen new malicious apps” on Google Play, all of which “were rooting malware that used exploits to gain root rights on the infected device.” Obviously, Google failed to catch any of those in time either.

The two apps in question this time around are called Magic Browser and Noise Detector. The name alone should make savvy Android users skeptical of their functionality, but it looks like many folks fell into the trap set by their creators.

Magic Browser had over 50,000 installs. Its description isn’t very professional and its design is very similar to that of Google Chrome. The name of the developer? Mishwing. If you do a Google search, you’ll find it’s the top result, with a link to its Google Play catalogue. The Google Play link now displays an URL not found error.

Noise Detector had over 10,000 installs. It comes from developer FredRee Junky. A Google search for the exact name also takes you straight to its Google Play page, which, again, throws the same error now. This one has less SEO power than Mishwing, as if you do the same Google search sans the obligatory quotes to narrow down the results you will find totally unrelated results on the main page.

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[In2an3_PpG]

but it looks like many folks fell into the trap set by their creators.

Once again, people are the problem. Not doing research before installing bogus play store apps thinking that their safe.

Thanks for sharing

 

[spaceoctopus]

It's becoming more and more important to have an antivirus on your Android smartphone. Obviously Google is unable to keep up with malwares and viruses. What is more dangerous in this, is that often people think that if they download from Google Play, they are completely safe. So,no need for an antivirus software. No unknown source installation alert, and you're nicely infected