14 DAY TRIAL // A series of malicious apps for Android has been discovered in the Google Play Store by a third-party security company, and by the looks of things, all of them were trying to steal Facebook credentials.
The apps, which have more than 2 million downloads combined, attempt to direct people to a fake Facebook login page, essentially collecting the account information and then sending it to a remote server.
Security company Evina says it has already reached out to Google to report the whole thing and all the apps have already been removed.
The most popular malicious app was called Super Wallpapers Flashlight and had more than 500,000 installs from the Google Play Store alone.
Have a look at user reviews in the Play store
As Evina notes, some of the reviews posted in the Google Play Store for each of the malicious apps indicated there was something wrong with them.
“When an application is launched on your phone, the malware queries the application name. If it is a Facebook application, the malware will launch a browser that loads Facebook at the same time. The browser is displayed in the foreground which makes you think that the application launched it. When you enter your credentials into this browser, the malware executes java script to retrieve them. The malware then sends your account information to a server,” the company explains.
While Google has already removed the apps from the Google Play Store, users are also recommended to uninstall them from their devices too.
In most of the cases, making sure that an application is completely clean doesn’t just come down to checking out the developer name and the number of downloads. Running up-to-date security products and always having a look at the reviews posted in the Play Store could also help determine if there’s something malicious about an app you are planning to download.