Malware News Over 200 malicious apps on Google Play downloaded millions of times

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Content source

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-200-malicious-apps-on-google-play-downloaded-millions-of-times/

Google Play, the official store for Android, distributed over a period of one year more than 200 malicious applications, which cumulatively counted nearly eight million downloads.

The data was collected between June 2023 and April 2024 by threat intelligence researchers at Zscaler, who identified and analyzed malware families both on Google Play and other distribution platforms.

The most common threats the researchers discovered on the official Android app store include:

• Joker (38.2%): Info-stealer and SMS message grabber that subscribes victims to premium services
• Adware (35.9%): Apps that consume internet bandwidth and battery to load either intrusive foreground ads or invisible ads in the background, generating fraudulent ad impressions
• Facestealer (14.7%): Facebook account credential stealers that overlay phishing forms on top of legitimate social media applications
• Coper (3.7%): Info-stealer and SMS message interceptor that can also perform keylogging and overlay phishing pages
• Loanly Installer (2.3%)
• Harly (1.4%): Trojan apps that subscribe victims to premium services
• Anatsa (0.9%): Anatsa (or Teabot) is a banking trojan that targets over 650 applications of banks worldwide

Earlier this year in May, the same researchers alerted of more than 90 malicious apps on Google Play, with a download count of 5.5 million.

To minimize the chances of getting infected by malware from Google Play, users are advised to read reviews from others to see what problems have been reported and check the application publisher.

Users should also check the permissions requested at installation time and abort the process if the app requires permissions that do not fit its activity.

Over 200 malicious apps on Google Play downloaded millions of times

Google Play, the official store for Android, distributed over a period of one year more than 200 malicious applications, which cumulatively counted nearly eight million downloads.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[Digmor Crusher]

I wish they would list the apps in these articles, by not doing so the article is pretty much useless. We all know there are malicious apps on Google Play.