Two Malicious Apps From Play Store Pretended To Be 'Selfie-App'

This week, Google already took down two Android apps in the Play Store because they were not what they seemed to be.

Two said apps are Funny Sweet Beauty Camera and Sun Pro Beauty Camera. As suggested by their names, they were promoted to offer selfie and mobile picture-taking. However, instead of the advertised introduction, they just pushed adware onto any smartphones having them downloaded.

Wandera, a cybersecurity company, was the first one discovering those malicious apps. Researchers from the Wandera said at the time they discovered, the app named Sun Pro had been downloaded more than 1 million times since Sep 2017. As for Funny Sweet Beauty, it was made public since July 2019 but at least 500,000 devices had installed it.

Not only bombarding smartphones with ads but both malicious apps also easily access private data from affected devices. Furthermore, users sometimes could not close these pop-up ads, and ads even appeared while these apps weren’t in use. At the permission stage, both apps asked for access to microphone and audio recording, which are more than the usual requirement of a camera app. Those could have been misused in alleged ways.

Trend Micro previously found in August 85 apps inside the Play Store, which also hide adware. After Wandera reported the problem to Google, two latest malicious apps have been no longer available. However, Google hasn’t made any announcements related to these apps yet. For those who have them in your devices, the current solution is that you should delete them as soon as possible. What’s more, please keep in mind that your privacy must not be traded in with your selfies, so you should install only trusted apps and keep an eye out for any app's requirement.

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