A workforce of cybersecurity researchers have discovered 35 apps which were serving malware to thousands and thousands of Android customers. As per a report by Bitdefender, a Romanian cybersecurity expertise firm, there’s a new malware marketing campaign on the Google Play Store the place a number of apps have been utilizing “false pretexts to lure victims into installing them”, then change their names, and “aggressively serve ads.” Not solely are these cybercriminals monetising their presence on Google Play, however they’re additionally disrupting the person expertise and these adverts can hyperlink on to malware.

Based on the obtainable public information, the report by Bitdefender says that these 35 malicious apps have a complete of over two million downloads on Google Play Store. They first lure Android customers in putting in them and shortly after set up, they conceal their presence on the machine by renaming themselves in addition to altering their icons. These apps then begin serving aggressive adverts. Since they use a distinct title to confuse the person and conceal their presence, the purposes are tough to seek out and uninstall.

“Many legitimate apps offer ads to their users, but these ones show ads through their own framework, which means they can also serve other types of malware to their victims. Most of the time, users can choose to delete the application if they don’t like it. Users can still delete them (malicious apps) at will, but the developers make it more difficult to find them on the affected devices,” the report highlighted.

Bitdefender report says that these recognized malicious apps are utilizing a brand new real-time behavioural expertise, which is designed to hold out harmful practices. Without taking away the due credit score of the app retailer doing “very good at weeding out malicious or dangerous apps”, the report says that simply because an app is downloaded from the official retailer doesn’t suggest it will likely be protected.

The greatest option to keep away from being a sufferer is to not set up apps that aren’t wanted. You also needs to delete apps they don’t seem to be in use, examine apps which have numerous downloads and few or no evaluations, and be cautious of apps that ask for particular permissions or don’t have anything to do with entry requests as in comparison with marketed performance.