Google Play Store Hosts Dangerous Apps
Hackers’ Apps Downloaded by Millions
The Google Play store has become the platform mostly utilized by dark web hackers to find unsuspecting victims. As recently reported, the popular Google Apps platform now hosts a plethora of dangerous software, which when downloaded can wreak havoc on the owners of infected electronic devices.
According to security analysts tracking the latest malware Apps found on the Google Play store, newly discovered applications were coded to create harmful actions that can steal user IDs as well as passwords. These Apps can also compromise other sensitive information, and even steal the private keys to cryptocurrency wallets.
The analytical research shed light on the dangers that the hacked applications truly perform, regarding some of the instances where these Apps, in a short time, received over a hundred thousand downloads from the Google flagship store.
Dangerous Apps Popularity
The Facestealer App that targets Facebook users is by far one of the most concentrated hacks that received countless downloads by unsuspecting victims. Also, the popularity of dangerous Apps depends on the targeted company. Popular websites have millions of daily visitors, so targeting sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can help to make the malware coded Apps quite appealing to followers of these famous platforms.
Facestealer, which is one of the most prominent Apps uploaded by dark web hackers purportedly has racked up millions of downloads through several variations. The dangerous App has masqueraded as a fitness App, even a picture editing software, and a host of other malware variety geared at stealing passwords, and other private credentials.
Joker and Facestealer Wreak Havoc
In July 2021, an analytical report by Dr. Web documented the action of the Facestealer and other frequently downloaded malware. The report shows how Facebook passwords are stolen by the phony Google Play applications.
The two most prominent mobile malware Apps that have great success on the App store are Facestealer and Joker. Additionally, the mobile Apps injected with malware have the characteristic of constantly changing their codes, which resulted in a plethora of hard to detect versions.
The hackers’ objective for the stolen credentials is then often used to hack Facebook users’ accounts where identity theft is their main goal. With these dangerous Apps downloaded by social media followers, hackers using the stolen information have been tracked to scams such as phishing, they have also been used as ad bots that carry out fraudulent postings on websites.
So far, the latest investigation by cyber security analysts has tracked the duplicated versions of these harmful mobile applications, and have reported that the Facestealer spyware compiles of 200 different versions in the Trend Micro Mobile App Reputation Service (MARS) database.
