Researchers at cybersecurity firm Check Point discovered that these 11 seemingly legitimate apps had been corrupted by a new variant of popular malware Joker that first surfaced late last year.
Google has reportedly banned 11 apps from its app store for injecting malware into users’ phones.
The applications include include com.imagecompress.android, com.relax.relaxation.androidsms, com.cheery.message.sendsms (two different instances), com.peason.lovinglovemessage, com.contact.withme.texts, com.hmvoice.friendsms, com.file.recovefiles, com.LPlocker.lockapps, com.remindme.alram and com.training.memorygame.
Researchers at cybersecurity firm Check Point discovered that these 11 seemingly legitimate apps had been corrupted by a new variant of popular malware Joker that first surfaced late last year. According to them, small changes made in the new variant helped it escape the Play store’s security and vetting barriers.
“Google Play Protect detected and removed 1.7k unique Bread apps from the Play Store before ever being downloaded by users. Bread apps originally performed SMS fraud, but have largely abandoned this for WAP billing following the introduction of new Play policies restricting use of the SEND_SMS permission and increased coverage by Google Play Protect,” the California based tech giant had said in a blog post.