500, 000 Duped Into Downloading Android Malware Posing As Driving Games On Google Play

[InfoSec News via ISN <isn () lists infosecnews org>]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/11/19/500000-duped-into-downloading-android-malware-posing-as-driving-games-on-google-play/

By Thomas Brewster
Forbes Staff
November 19, 2018

Be careful what you're downloading from Google Play. Especially if it's 
one of 13 apps posing as driving games created by one developer called 
Luiz Pinto.

More than 560,000 have already been tricked into downloading the games, 
which include a mix of luxury car and truck simulation apps, as discovered 
by Android malware researcher Lukas Stefanko.

Once installed on a user's Android device, the games don't actually work. 
Looking at the reviews on Google Play, users who downloaded them 
complained it was a virus. For instance, among the masses of one-star 
reviews for the Truck Cargo Simulator, one noted his device slowed down 
after it forced him to download an app that wasn't the game itself. Many 
simply called it a scam.

For the Luxury Cars SUV Traffic app, one user warned: "The app tries to 
update via unknown sources. Most likely very unsafe." As others found, 
they couldn't find the icon for the game once downloaded. That was 
because, according to Stefanko, the developer hid it from view.

[...]



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