Sophos reports 22 malicious apps on Play Store; Google removes them

Sophos a cyber-security company that makes security app published in its blog post about some of the malicious apps which had backdoor built into them and which helped the apps do ad frauds. Collectively these apps were downloaded 2 million times before they were deleted by google play store.

These apps were linked to Andr and Clickr ad network. Sophos wrote that this “is a well-organized, persistent malware that has the potential to cause serious harm to end user as well as the entire Android ecosystem”. Apps used to generate fraudulent requests that cost ad networks significant revenue as a result of fake clicks.

How does the user suffer? The cyber security company in its blog explained the consequences these app can cause to users phone. As far as user is concerned these apps were responsible to drain their phone battery and may have caused data over usage as the app were constantly running and communicating with servers in the background. Not only this the app are fully controlled by C2 servers and have the ability to install any malware upon the instruction of the server.

One should get rid of these 22 app from your phone. After the company reported the issue to Google, the company has removed them form the play store. Hence it is not clear that if those app were removed from people’s phone as google has the capability to do so if the user has downloaded it from play store and if he is logged in as well as connected to their play store account.

This is not the first time that this has happened. A few weeks earlier several popular apps like Clean Master were found to be doing something similar.

List of the 22 app that one should not have on their mobile phone are:

1.            Sparkle Flashlight

2.            Snake Attack

3.            Math Solver

4.            Shape Sorter

5.            Tak A Trip

6.            Magnifeye

7.            Join Up

8.            Zombie Killer

9.            Space Rocket

10.          Neon Pong

11.          Just Flashlight

12.          Table Soccer

13.          Cliff Diver                                                           

14.          Box Stack

15.          Jelly Slice

16.          AK Blackjack

17.          Color Tiles

18.          Animal Match

19.          Roulette Mania

20.          Hexa Fall

21.          Hexa Blocks

22.          Pair Zap