Sharing the details in a post, the researchers revealed that they found 25 different applications exhibiting this dubious behavior.
In brief, all these apps contained malware that reached the users’ device via Google Play Store. After establishing on the target device, the malware would then used to check every app opening on the device.
Upon detecting Facebook, the malware would open a browser window luring the user to enter the credentials.
While the user would enter the details considering the new window as Facebook, the malware would steal the credentials in the back and would send it to its server.
These 25 apps had a combined 2.34 million downloads. It means the malware potentially affected millions of users.
Commenting on this malware, Lionel Ferri, Evina CTO, said,
It’s a fraudulent technique that points out the danger and reflects how important it is to protect yourself. It cannot be identified by Facebook as the malware displays in front of the legit app when it is launched.Below is the list of apps the researchers found malicious after reverse-engineering.
Following their report, Google removed all the 25 apps from the Play Store.
It means that the threat, for now, is over. However, it actually never ends. Nobody knows when the next batch of malicious or suspicious apps would appear on the Play Store and start preying on users.
Nevertheless, users can always prevent such attacks by downloading the apps only from legit and trusted developers.
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