{"id":139577,"date":"2022-05-18T23:02:31","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T04:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/more-than-200-apps-on-play-store-with-millions-of-downloads-are-stealing-users-passwords-and-sensitive-information"},"modified":"2022-05-18T23:02:31","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T04:02:31","slug":"more-than-200-apps-on-play-store-with-millions-of-downloads-are-stealing-users-passwords-and-sensitive-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/more-than-200-apps-on-play-store-with-millions-of-downloads-are-stealing-users-passwords-and-sensitive-information","title":{"rendered":"More than 200 apps on Play Store with millions of downloads are stealing users\u2019 passwords and sensitive information"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-plvKXjb_CY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/en_us\/research\/22\/e\/fake-mobile-apps-steal-facebook-credentials--crypto-related-keys.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Trend Micro<\/a><\/strong> identified a set of <strong>mobile apps<\/strong> available on the <strong>Google Play Store<\/strong> performing malicious tasks in the background, including stealing user credentials and banking details from <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.securitynewspaper.com\/2022\/05\/02\/you-can-earn-1-5-million-dollar-by-finding-vulnerabilities-in-android-13-beta\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Android<\/a><\/strong> users. Some of these apps have nearly 100,000 downloads, so the scope of the problem is considerable.<\/p>\n<p>In total, the analysis revealed the detection of 200 malicious applications that hide code from dangerous <strong>malware<\/strong> variants, capable of putting users of the affected devices in serious trouble.<\/p>\n<p>One of the main threats identified is <strong>Facestealer<\/strong>, a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.securitynewspaper.com\/2022\/02\/16\/this-mexican-businessman-was-charged-for-selling-phone-interception-tools-and-spyware-to-companies-and-government-agencies-in-latin-america\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">spyware<\/a><\/strong> variant capable of stealing Facebook access credentials, allowing subsequent phishing campaigns, social engineering, and invasive advertising. Facestealer is constantly updated and there are multiple versions, making it easy for them to get into the Play Store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at Trend Micro identified a set of mobile apps available on the Google Play Store performing malicious tasks in the background, including stealing user credentials and banking details from Android users. Some of these apps have nearly 100,000 downloads, so the scope of the problem is considerable. In total, the analysis revealed the detection [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,45,1512],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-finance","category-mobile-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}