Malicious Apps Consume Your Android Screens
By: Jim Stickley and Tina Davis
December 30, 2019
It may be a new year, but cybercriminals are up to old tricks. Google recently removed at least 85 fake apps from the official Google Play store after discovering they included adware that actually displayed full-screen ads every 15 minutes. These apps were, of course, the type that are attractive to a wide range of consumer such as TV and remote control simulators and games.
Trend Micro researchers said they found these malicious adware apps and that they had been downloaded around 9 million times. Yep. That’s right. Nine million people have these on their devices now and probably don’t even realize what it is. These apps can hide themselves, monitor the device’s screen, and unlock functionality…all while just hanging out in the background.
After being notified, Google quickly suspended these apps, so there is no fear of downloading these particular ones anymore. However, the threat of others being there still exists. Google is doing a better job at checking security these days and is very quick to remove the bad ones when notified. And getting your apps from the Google Play store is still far more secure than sideloading or downloading them from third-party sites. Those may go through far less scrutiny when it comes to security checks.
In addition, make sure to check the reviews of apps before putting them on your devices. A lot of negative reviews are clues that something may be amiss.
Some of the behaviors of these apps, besides popping up ads at regular intervals are to show ads every time the device is unlocked, show prompts such as “start,” “open app,” or “next” that when clicked merely shows another ad, or claiming something is “buffering” then just disappear from the screen.
The researchers believe the apps are all using the same code, even though they are from different developers. They exhibit many of the same behaviors and it makes some believe that it’s malware being sold as a service once again. Why recreate the wheel, when you can just reuse someone else’s work. Right?
To remove the apps, they can be manually uninstalled using the “uninstall” feature or however they can be removed on your device. However, this might be tricky when an ad is consuming your screen every 15 minutes. You may just have to time it right!