A new report by Bitdefender does not exactly bring good news. Bitdefender’s anomaly detection tech spotted tens of thousands of compromised Android apps out there.
Tens of thousands compromised apps were spotted on Android
This tech is included in Bitdefender Mobile Security, and it uncovered a hidden malware campaign that was running undetected on mobile devices all around the world. This has been going on for over six months.
This malware campaign is designed to “aggressively push adware to Android devices with the purpose of driving revenue”. The thing is, whoever operates this, has the ability to change things up, and make things even worse.
They have the ability to switch to other types of malware, such as banking Trojans, for example. Bitdefender reports that it uncovered 60,000 unique apps that have been carrying this adware. There are likely more of them out there, though.
This malware has been around since October last year
The company notes that this malware has been around since October 2022. The thing is, this malware was picked up via third-party stores, it seems, not from official stores, such as the Google Play Store. So the distribution is kind of impressive, having that in mind.
Many of these apps are actually mimicking real ones, such as Netflix, YouTube and TikTok without ads, Free VPN, and more. They’re doing everything they can to lure users into installing them.
This specific malware is easy to recognize, kind of. When you install an infected app, your phone will throw an error, and say that the “Application is unavailable in your region. Tap OK to uninstall”.
The app will remain installed on your phone, however. IT will be the last app on the list, as it doesn’t have a name or icon, so it’ll be harder to spot when you check.
If you’d like to know more about the details of this malware, check out Bitdefender’s original post.