Evina, a French cybersecurity firm have caught about 25 apps on Google Play Store stealing end user’s data. They have reported these apps to Google and have managed to reverse engineer the malware, enabling it to protect end user’s data.
These apps are now removed from Google Play Store and are no longer available for use. These apps were mostly services like file managers, wallpaper management, screenshot editor, weather detector, or games like Solitaire. These apps had inbuilt malware that helped steal Facebook data like login details when installed on the phone.
Sketchy Android Apps removed from Google Play Store, on reports of stealing user data
In an explanation of how these apps stole data, Evina, the cybersecurity firm clarified that when any of these applications are launched on the phone, the malware queries the application name. If it is a Facebook application, the malware launches a browser to load Facebook at the same time.
The browser is displayed in the front which makes the end user think that the application has launched it and when one’s Facebook credentials are entered into this browser, the malware executes javascript to retrieve them. The malware then sends this account information to the server. This fraud cannot be identified by Facebook as the malware displays in front of the legit app when it is launched.
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Evina reported these findings to Google in May who did an investigation of their own and followed it by the removal of these in June. They were also disabled on the user’s end and Google notified the same to the user via Google Play Store’s Play Protect service. To date, these apps have had more than 2 million downloads.
Following app are banned by Google:
- iPlayer & iWallpaper
- Super Wallpapers Flashlight
- Contour level Wallpaper
- Padenatef
- Video Maker
- Wallpaper Level
- Powerful Flashlight
- Pedometer
- Color Wallpapers
- Super Bright Flashlight
- Synthetic Z
- Super Flashlight
- Classic card game
- Solitaire game
- Junk File Cleaning
- Accurate Scanning of QR Code
- File Manager
- iHealth Step Counter
- Screenshot Capture
- Wuxia Reader
- Anime Live Wallpaper
- Composite Z
- Daily Horoscope Wallpapers
- Plus Weather
- tqyapp.fiction
To protect user privacy, Google removes 106 Chrome extensions
Recently Google also removed 106 Chrome extensions that posed as a threat to user’s privacy, collecting sensitive data from the phone. A cybersecurity firm, Awake Security had alerted Google about 111 Chrome extensions of which 106 extensions were taken down by Google.
These extensions allegedly posed as tools to improve web searches. They also could take screenshots, read the clipboard, harvest authentication cookies, and grab user keystrokes for reading user passwords and any confidential information.