Monday, September 25 2023

24 malicious apps hosted on google play store found to be containing malware of rogue ware, these 24 apps have a whooping combined downloads of over 300 million. To some respite, the apps are now removed from Google Play Store, but what about a large number of users will still have these installed on their smartphones. for them, immediately uninstalling these apps from smartphone is the only solution.

Hi Security developed by Hi Security, Super Cleaner developed by Hawk App, Super Battery developed by Hawk App, Candy developed by ViewYeah Studio, Hi VPN developed by Hi Security, Gallery developed by Alcatel Innovative Lab,

filemanager developed by mie-alcatel.support, Net Master developed by Hi Security, apps are included in the list. Apps that were not in Play Store: Weather developed by mie-alcatel.support,Joy Recorder developed by mie-alcatel.support, Calculator, Launcher developed by mie-alcatel.support.

Not 100% confirmed who is behind the apps, the Chinese company named Shenzhen HAWK is the most likely at questions. Unfortunately, Apps under Shenzhen HAWK have a history of malware, rogue ware, or unethical practices.

Google in a statement said “If we find behaviour that violates our policies, we take action.”

Planning to hire an outside security consultant to audit their apps, Shenzhen Hawk’s parent company, TCL Corporation responded saying that they “understand Google’s actions in removing all of the Shenzhen apps and are actively working with them to better understand their concerns.”

So authentic these 24 apps seemed to be that all of these apps took user permissions to gain access to various features like the ability to make calls, take pictures and record video, record audio and much more. The users were unwary of the fact that the apps also asked for a large amount of unnecessary dangerous permissions, which was overlooked.

Cellphone users who installed these apps noticed, included but not limited to, humongous phone bill charges, always open browser that auto clicked on the ads, abrupt restart of the cellphones, more than normal booting time of cellphone, non responsive web pages. According to an cyber expert, the apps might have been created to harvest user data ans store it on a server in China.

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