Dangerous malware detected in 14 Google Play apps with thousands of downloads, check your phone
It is always recommended that we take a look at all the applications that we have installed on our devices because it is likely that we will not identify some of these apps and they may be fraudulent.
Now, security firm McAfee has discovered 14 infected applications in the Google Play Store, and most worryingly, is that three of which had more than 100,000 installations each.
They identify it as a back door Android call Xamalicious and that it would have already infected to 338,300 devices through these malicious applications.
Although these malicious applications have now been removed from Google Play, they were available at some point, and it is likely that you installed them.
In this way, take a look at some of these fraudulent applications in case you have them installed on your Android device:
- Essential Horoscope for Android – 100,000 installations
- 3D Skin Editor for PE Minecraft – 100,000 installs
- Logo Maker Pro – 100,000 installs
- Auto Click Repeater – 10,000 installations
- Count Easy Calorie Calculator – 10,000 installations
- Dots: One Line Connector – 10,000 installations
- Sound Volume Extender – 5,000 installations
Furthermore, a separate set of 12 malicious applications carrying this threat were distributed in third-party application stores through APK files.
Most of the infected devices are located in the United States, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
The malware, after installation, communicates with a C2 server and is activated if certain specific prerequisites such as geographic ones are met.
In this way, this malware can collect device and hardware information, can determine the geographic location of the device, can list all system applications installed on the device, and can even report the permission status of accessibility services.
On the other hand, they have also discovered that Xamalicious It is also capable of advertising fraud on infected devices, causing your mobile’s performance to be lower as it is dealing with fraudulent clicks in the background.
