Malicious Applications Found On Google Play Store – Are We Still Safe?

According to “Check Point”, a research firm, 50 malicious applications have been identified on the Google Play Store. These applications charge premium fees to its users without their knowledge for fake services.

To make things even worse, these applications have been downloaded between b million to 4.2 million times. More than 5000 devices have been infected so far, but the applications have already been removed from the official Android store to protect the users that have not got their devices infected yet.

The new malware that was detected in the infected applications is called “ExpensiveWall” and it sends fraudulent premium SMS messages. This way the users’ accounts are getting charged for fake services without their knowledge.

The name derives from “Lovely Wallpaper”, one of the applications that it is using to infect devices. It seems that the infected applications were able to pass the Google’s malware protection and get listed on the official Android store.

ExpensiveWall will register the victim to premium services without his/her knowledge. Once this happens, it will start sending fraudulent premium SMS messages, charging the victims’ account for fake services.

Keep in mind that when these malware applications are downloaded it will ask you for several permissions, like any other regular application. However, these infected applications will also ask permission to connect to its fraudulent servers for transferring important data and SMS permissions to send premium SMS messages.

Once ExpensiveWall is installed and gets all the necessary permissions, it will start sending data about the infected device to its server, including the location of the handset and unique identifiers such as IP addresses, MAC, IMEI and IMSI. To make things even worse, the malware is able to operate “silently.” This means that the victim will not even notice that his/her device is infected by a malware.

In case you think that your device is infected with a malware, we suggest you to install an anti-virus application from the Google Play Store.