These famous 22 apps have malware in them

• 22 Famous apps on Play Store have malware
• Uninstall them immediate to protect yourself
• We have highlighted the list of apps below
  

Almost 2 dozen apps on Google Play have with more than 2 million installs have been detected to have malware. The apps which have been on Play Store for over a year now. The trojan apps were detected to have code with clickfraud added.

These apps have been removed from Google Play last week by Google but if they are installed on users phone they will remain active and potentially open to further exploitation putting the users’ data at risk.

Hijacked phones were used to artificially click on links

The hijacked phones would download the ads from a site owned by the attackers, mobbt.com, and make the ads non-visible to the users by setting the size to 0x0 pixels.

While the trojan behaviour is not immediately obvious for the users these apps can have adverse affect on the phone’s life but more threatentingly has the abiliyt to execute malicious code as the behest of the controlling server.

The apps which communicated with the server looking for commands as frequently as every 80 seconds were designed to be persistent so that if the user closes the app it would restart itself in the backend. The rogue behaviour is obviously very hard to detect, the user will only see the battery draining faster and a very high data usage as signs that their phones have been infected.

Extra precaution to stay safe

Users should take extra precautions to keep themselves safe from such attacks. The steps that can be taken are

1. Don’t install apps from unknown sources
2. Keep an eye on the performance of the phone
3. Keep an eye on the data usage
4. Uninstall apps that are unused
   

List of Apps that were infected

Below is the list of apps that were found to be infected, courtesy Sophos. While Google has the ability to wipe such apps remote that violate its term to be safe please check and unistall them immediately.