Half a dozen Android apps, pretending to be utility companies, have been scamming customers and incomes the builders promoting income, cybersecurity researchers have claimed.

The apps have managed to idiot fairly various folks, having apparently been downloaded greater than two million instances.

Google has since eliminated all of them from the Play Retailer, however customers are nonetheless being warned to be on their guard.

Malicious Android apps

The Dr. Net antivirus group found a complete of 5 apps whose solely purpose is to trick folks into downloading them after which serve them advertisements for so long as doable. The most important one, with greater than 1,000,000 downloads, is TubeBox.

TubeBox guarantees customers a lower of the promoting income in the event that they sit and watch advertisements within the app. Nevertheless, the entire thing is a trick, as when the person tries to redeem the rewards, they’ll conveniently run into totally different bugs and errors. Even those that in some way handle to work round all the bugs will merely not get any funds.

Different found apps are “Bluetooth machine auto join”, with 1,000,000 downloads, “Bluetooth & Wi-Fi & USB driver”, with 100,000 downloads, “Quantity, Music Equalizer” with 50,000 downloads, and “Quick Cleaner & Cooling Grasp”, with some 500 downloads.

The apps don’t serve simply any advertisements – a Firebase Cloud Messaging account serves as a C2 server and instructs the apps which web sites to load.

Some apps, such because the “Quick Cleaner & Cooling Grasp”, may be used as a proxy server, the researchers discovered. With a proxy, the menace actors might channel their site visitors by means of the contaminated endpoint (opens in new tab).

Simply because an app sits on the Google Play Retailer, doesn’t make it safe by default. Though Google’s protection mechanisms are formidable, menace actors are all the time searching for new methods to squeeze fraudulent apps into the favored app repository, and succeed once in a while. To guard towards such apps, all the time be certain to learn by means of the critiques, as different customers may very well be warning concerning the fraud, as properly.

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