You Need To Urgently Remove These 17 Infected Apps From Your Phone
If your phone has been misbehaving lately or getting billed for premium services that you never subscribed to, chances are that your phone has been infected by a malware without your knowledge.
Google has removed 17 Android applications from its official Play Store. The 17 Apps, spotted by security researchers from Zscaler, were infected with the dangerous Joker malware commonly referred to as bread.
The Joker malware is known to spy and steal information from unsuspecting users when users open the infected Apps. You are then signed up for premium services unaware through the wireless protocol application (WAP) services.
Despite several attempt to eliminate it, Joker malware keeps finding its way into Google’s official application market by employing changes in its code. Google has been tracking Joker internally as one of the most users of dropper technique.
According to the statement released by the organization, these 17 application were downloaded 1,20,000 times. The researchers were constantly monitoring the Joker malware and had witnessed regular uploads of it onto the Google Play store. Once the Google Android Security team was notified, the suspicious apps were removed. However, phones that already had these apps installed should remove them from their phones manually.
“This spyware is designed to steal SMS messages, contact lists, and device information along with silently signing up the victim for premium wireless application protocol(WAP services” Zscaler security research statement read.
The 17 malware infected Apps were uploaded on the App Store in the month of September and had been downloaded 120,000 times before they were detected.
List Of Marlware Infected Apps
Below is the list of 17 Apps that were infected
- All Good PDF Scanner
- Mint Leaf Message-Your Private Message
- Unique Keyboard – Fancy Fonts and Free Emoticons
- Tangram App Lock
- Direct Messenger
- Private SMS
- One Sentence Translator – Multifunctional Translator
- Style Photo Collage
- Desire Translate
- Talent Photo Editor – Blur focus
- Care Message
- Part Message
- Paper Doc Scanner
- Meticulous Scanner
- Blue Scanner
- Hummingbird PDF Converter – Photo to PDF
- All Good PDF Scanner
For users who had already downloaded the Apps, they will need to manually delete the Apps on their mobile devices. By Google removing the Apps from Play Store, individuals with the Apps already installed on their phones will not be able to updated those Apps.
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