We do not spend a quiet week without being alerted from different corners of cyberspace of a new danger that can affect our mobiles. Now it is McAfee who reports the discovery of a series of apps , which have been installed more than 700,000 times, and which make purchases online without the user knowing .
This malware is hidden in eight Android applications, at least in those discovered, since it is still unknown whether it may be present in any more. The program hijacks the notification manager to steal incoming SMS messages like the Android Joker malware does, without even having the SMS read permission. But the danger of these affected apps for the victim is not only that the user’s text messages can be seen and other nooks and crannies of the smartphone can be accessed, but it is also capable of carrying out unauthorized purchases with the user’s own money. victims.
Luckily, it seems that they have been eliminated before reaching Europe but it does not hurt that you stay on notice in case you see them appear in our application store. McAfee claims that the apps had already been seen by the Google Play Store in Southwest Asia and the Arabian Peninsula before Google removed them.
What applications should you avoid?
Infected applications use the claim of personalization and attract attention with many colors. They appear in stores as photo editors, wallpaper apps, puzzles, keyboard themes, and other camera-related apps. To prevent Google from identifying them as dangerous , they are uploaded “clean” to the Play store and the malicious code is added through different updates.
These are the apps to avoid:
- com.studio.keypaper2021
- com.pip.editor.camera
- org.my.favorites.up.keypaper
- com.super.color.hairdryer
- com.ce1ab3.app.photo.editor
- com.hit.camera.pip
- com.daynight.keyboard.wallpaper
- com.super.star.ringtones
This does not mean that all photo editing, wallpaper downloading or keyboard theme apps are dangerous, as is the case with those mentioned. You just have to know very well what you download.
Almost all of them were full of negative comments from users alluding to unauthorized purchases on Android before McAfee raised the alarm, which already anticipated that something was not working very well with them. For this reason it is always so important that, before downloading any app, take a look at what other users say about it.