Avast specialists reported that they found seven malicious adware applications in the App Store and Google Play, developed by one person or a group of persons and installed more than 2,400,000 times in total. Interestingly, the child helped to detect the malware.
Majority of malware masked as entertainment apps, including games, wallpaper apps, or music downloaders.
- Shock My Friends – Satuna (AppStore);
- 666 Time (AppStore);
- ThemeZone – Live Wallpapers (AppStore);
- Shock my friend tap roulette v (AppStore);
- Ulimate Music Downloader – Free Download Music (Google Play);
- Tap Roulette ++Shock my Friend (Google Play);
- ThemeZone – Shawky App Free – Shock My Friends (Google Play).
However, some of them showed intrusive ads even when the application itself was not active.
To prevent users from uninstalling malware, applications hid their icons from victims.
Other malicious apps charged users between $2 and $10 in subscription fees for features that either didn’t exist or didn’t work as expected. According to the analyst service SensorTower, this brought the malware developers more than $500,000.
Interestingly, adware was detected thanks to the vigilance of one child. Researchers say that an unnamed
As a result, Avast experts found that the malware advertised three profiles on TikTok, one of which has more than 330,000 subscribers (7odestar), and the other has more than 28,000 subscribers (Dejavuuu.Es3). Additionally, was discovered an Instagram account with 5,000 followers, which also promoted one of the applications.
The developers of Google Play have already removed the malware from their catalog, while malware is still available in the App Store.
Additionally, Avast experts notified representatives of Facebook and TikTok about suspicious profiles, but so far this did not produce any effect.
Avast is doing great this time, and they have a really good antivirus service, but just in case, let’s remind you of the scandal when a subsidiary of the company traded with user data. However, Avast quickly and correctly reacted to the scandal and closed their subsidiary – tie everything in a neat little bow?
