Five applications available on Google Play that hide dangerous malware Beware of downloading them
Downloading apps from legitimate sources no longer frees you from the dangers of the Internet. And we have the latest case on Android, where the Kaspersky security team has identified five apps available on Google Play that harbor the dangerous Mandrake malware.
As Kaspersky analysts reported, they have discovered a new espionage campaign that distributes Mandrake malware via Google Play under the guise of legitimate apps related to cryptocurrency, gaming, and astronomy.
These apps have been available for two years and have managed to rack up 32,000 downloads, so check to see if you have any of these apps installed on your phone.
In case you’re not familiar with Mandrake, it’s an Android spyware platform that has been active since at least 2016. It seems that cyber attackers have created a new version of this dangerous malware with new evasion techniques. Including changing malicious functions to native libraries using OLLVM, they are able to bypass Google Play’s security controls.
We are talking about 5 applications that have been published since 2022 on Google Play, and have accumulated more than 32,000 downloads. They were presented as a file sharing application over Wi-Fi, an astronomy services application, an Amber game for Genshin, a cryptocurrency application, and an application with logical puzzles.
Be careful, although some of them are still available on Google Play, they are available in other stores. We leave you the list of applications so that you can delete them as soon as possible:
- AirFS
- Brain Matrix
- Astro Explorer
- Amber
- CryptoPulsing
What can you do to avoid these malicious apps? To be honest, be careful and change your usage habits. In the past, it was common to download all kinds of apps from Google Play and see which ones interested you and which ones didn’t. Times have changed now, and apart from well-known apps with excellent ratings, it’s better not to risk it and download everything from Google Play, since the security of this app store is no longer what it used to be.
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