To keep your Android smartphone free from malware, viruses, and other forms of malicious applications lurking the web, the Google Play Store is the recommended place to get your Android application.
However, despite's Google improved security and measures in place to keep malware-infected apps out of the Play Store, malicious apps do still find ways to sneak onto the Play Store. And as a result, ending up on users Android smartphones.
The latest malware coming from the Play Store has infected over 3 million Android smartphones, though Google has purged all the apps from the Play Store, you could still have one of them on your smartphone.
According to security researcher Maxime Ingrao (via Bleepingcomputer) who made the discovery and dubbed the malware "Autolycos", explained that after the malware has been downloaded by an unsuspecting victim, it will go ahead and subscribe the user to premium services without their knowledge. And as you know, premium services means heavy bills for the user. But how does the malware manage to do this without the users knowledge?
Autolycos is able to achieve this by executing URLs on a remote browser, separately, and then returning the resuts without a Webview. This process allows Autolycos apps to work stealthily without arousing the users suspicion. Also, theses kinds of apps do ask for permission to read a users' SMS log, which then allows Autolycos to freely scrape the victims text messages.
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3 million Android installs is really huge! How then did this malware rake in such downloads? Ingrao explained on Twitter that the actors behind this malware promoted several Facebook Pages and then ran ads on Facebook on Instagram.
For example, there were 74 ad campaigns for Razer Keyborad & theme apps alone. These apps got over half a million Play Store downloads.
Below is the list of Autolycos malware-infected apps that were removed from the Play Store. Check your phone if you happen to have any of them installed. Again, Autolycos may be present in other apps on the Play Store not mentioned here.
- Vlog Star Video Editor: 1 million downloads
- Creative 3D Launcher: 1 million downloads
- Funny Camera: 500,000 downloads
- Razer Keyboard & Theme: 500,000 downloads
- Wow Beauty Camera: 100,000 downloads
- Gif Emoji Keyboard: 100,000 downloads
- Freeglow Camera 1.0.0: 5,000 downloads
- Coco Camera v1.1: 1,000 downloads
The security researcher also notes Google's slow response to complaints. Ingaro said he discovered the Autolycos malware back in June 2021 and reported it to Google. However, it took Google half a year to remove 6 out of the 8 infected apps with Autolycos from the Play Store.
The Internet giant eventually booted the reamining two apps from the Play Store last week wednesday when BleepingComputer publishd the article.