There are always dangerous apps lurking in the Google Play Store. Kaspersky reports that in 2023 we downloaded them as many as 600 million times. What tricks do hackers use?
As reported by cybersecurity company Kaspersky, in store Google Play Store A lot of dangerous applications for Android smartphone users have been discovered again.
Hackers are using increasingly new and more difficult to detect techniques, which is why the number of malicious applications has been increasing all the time. Android users have already downloaded malicious apps this year over 600 million times.
Hackers also use proven tricks to avoid being caught by Google. One of the fraudsters’ strategies is, among others: adding malicious features to a previously legally operating application.
What dangerous apps were discovered in the Google Play Store?
This fate befell, among others, iRecorder application, which was released in the Play Store in 2021, and after less than a year, the update added the code of a dangerous Trojan that recorded conversations of smartphone users and sent them to hackers. The application was downloaded 50,000 times.
hacker/ photo: mika-baumeister unsplash
Another trick is to open multiple developer accounts with Google. This is what happened with the Beauty Slimming Photo Editor, Photo Effect Editor and GIF Camera Editor Pro apps which downloaded 620 thousand times. When Google removed an app added by one programmerthe hackers added it to the store again from another account.
Counterfeits of the Minecraft application have also become extremely popular recently. Dangerous programs were downloaded as many as 35 million times! These applications included hidden adware HiddenAds, which displayed ads in the background that were invisible to the user. Here, the greatest damage was caused to the batteries of our smartphones.
What can you do to try to protect yourself from downloading a dangerous app in the Google Play Store? An important step is definitely to check reviews, opinions and ratings of a given application. It is also worth paying attention to suspicious graphics or spelling errors in the description or in the application itself. This should also give us food for thought.
https://www.gsmmaniak.pl/1450585/apple-iphone-wpadl-do-ogniska-i-dzialal/
