#ANTIVIRUS ONE ANDOIRD GOOGLE PLAY STORE CODE#The developers who created the ' GPS Location Maps' added heavy code obfuscation and encryption in order to make reverse engineering difficult. Many of the detected apps also request permission to display over other apps, which means that they are likely also simulating user clicks to rake on profits. Also, on some devices, a few malicious apps even request permission to bypass the battery optimization feature and start foreground services notifications to stay alive and not get killed by the system. The ' GPS Locations Maps' app makes it difficult for users to find and uninstall it by changing its icon. #ANTIVIRUS ONE ANDOIRD GOOGLE PLAY STORE ANDROID#WebViews is part of the Android operating system that allows apps to load content like web pages, ads, and more. Immediately after installation, the app changes its label from 'GPS Location Maps' to 'Settings' and then shows additional websites in WebViews and an advertisement. With over 100k downloads, it's one of the more popular, but we noticed it doesn't have any reviews. We looked at the 'GPS Location Maps' app as the first example. This new technology is already producing results as new detections are instantly shared with all Bitdefender Mobile Security users. Bitdefender identified the malicious apps using a new real-time behavioral technology designed to detect precisely these dangerous practices, among many others. While all of the detected apps are clearly malicious, the developers were able to upload them to the Google Play Store, offer them to users and even push updates that made the apps better at hiding on devices. Users can still delete them at will, but the developers make it more difficult to find them on the affected devices. But these new malicious apps trick victims into installing them, only to change their name and icons and even take some extra steps to conceal their presence on the device. Most of the time, users can choose to delete the application if they don't like it. 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. While this may sound diminutive, these ads served to victims are disrupting the usage experience and can link directly to malware. One of the ways cyber-criminals monetize their presence on Google Play is to serve ads to their victims. To confuse the user and conceal their presence, the applications are changing their name and icon after installation. These apps hide their presence on the device by renaming themselves and changing their icon, then start serving aggressive ads.Bitdefender has identified 35 applications that have snuck into the Play Store, totaling over two million downloads if we consider the available public data.This is the case of a new malware campaign on the Google Play Store where numerous apps use false pretexts to lure victims into installing them, only to change their name and aggressively serve ads afterward. While the platform's security checks have improved through the years, our research still uncovers malicious apps that use a vast array of tricks to bypass these checks. Note: all applications mentioned in this research have been taken down and are no longer accessible.įor the past few years, cyber-criminals have strengthened their efforts to have malicious applications listed on Google Play Store – the world's most trafficked Android app source.
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