Security News

Google has announced new, real-time scanning features for Google Play Protect that make it harder for malicious apps employing polymorphism to evade detection. The problem is that authors of malicious apps promoted outside Google Play have resorted to AI and polymorphic malware that frequently alters identifiable information in a malicious program to bypass automated security platforms, making those scans ineffective.

Amazon mistakenly sent out purchase confirmation emails for Hotels.com, Google Play, and Mastercard gift cards to customers, making many worried their accounts were compromised. The emails were sent out last night, with customers reporting receiving three separate emails from Amazon Prime for each alleged gift card purchase.

An app with the name Signal Plus Messenger was available on Play for nine months and had been downloaded from Play roughly 100 times before Google took it down last April after being tipped off by security firm ESET. It was also available in the Samsung app store and on signalplus[. An app calling itself FlyGram was created by the same threat actor and was available through the same three channels.

At the time the researchers published their report, several malicious apps were still available for download through Google Play. The Telegram apps presented in Kaspersky's report are promoted as "Faster" alternatives to the regular app.

Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that's designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. The apps have been collectively downloaded millions of times before they were taken down by Google.

ESET researchers have identified two active campaigns targeting Android users, where the threat actors behind the tools for Telegram and Signal are attributed to the China-aligned APT group GREF. Most likely active since July 2020 and since July 2022, respectively for each malicious app, the campaigns have distributed the Android BadBazaar espionage code through the Google Play store, Samsung Galaxy Store, and dedicated websites posing as legitimate encrypted chat applications - the malicious apps are FlyGram and Signal Plus Messenger. Threat actors exploit fake Signal and Telegram apps.

Trojanized Signal and Telegram apps containing the BadBazaar spyware were uploaded onto Google Play and Samsung Galaxy Store by a Chinese APT hacking group known as GREF. [...]

McAfee's Mobile Research Team discovered the malicious Android apps and reported them to Google as they violated Google Play Store's policies. McAfee's report says the adware was hidden in Google Play apps that impersonated the TV/DMB Player, Music Downloader, News, and Calendar applications.

The Google Cloud security team acknowledged a common tactic known as versioning used by malicious actors to slip malware on Android devices after evading the Google Play Store's review process and...

Threat actors are leveraging a technique called versioning to evade Google Play Store's malware detections and target Android users. Earlier this May, ESET discovered a screen recording app named "iRecorder - Screen Recorder" that remained innocuous for nearly a year after it was first uploaded to the Play Store before malicious changes were introduced sneakily to spy on its users.