Applications have been part of people's lives for a long time now, but what many don't know is that they can indeed contain viruses when they are being downloaded to the cell phone. Recently, a group of cybersecurity experts found more than 80 fake apps on official iOS and Android stores. android.
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These apps were involved in ad fraud schemes, according to the report released last Friday (23). Adware, computer programs that automatically run advertisements without the user's permission, have been downloaded over 13 million times on both Apple and Google operating systems.
According to HUMAN's Satori Threat Intelligence researchers, these adware were masquerading as reliable, true applications, but as soon as they were opened on cell phones, they began to display an avalanche Ads. In addition, they displayed advertisements in a hidden way, that is, without the victim being able to notice or see the ad, thus generating more views for the fraudulent pages.
The scheme worked as follows: using an ID that did not correspond to the publication, the fake applications deceived the advertisers generating revenues through clicks and impressions that, until then, originated from a much more complex software category. profitable. What made the search difficult to find them was that they used additional layers that obfuscated their codes.
These adware are believed to be part of a fraudulent advertising campaign called “Scylla”. And it would not be the first time that this has happened, but the third wave of action, which began in 2019, titled “Poseidon”, and which in the second stage, promoted in 2020, was called “Charybdis”.
According to what appears in the reports, most of the apps from these fake ads were found in the Play Store. In total, there were more than 75 adware that were available in the Android store, all disguised as legitimate applications and using names like: Super Hero-Save the world!, Shoot Master, Dinosaur Legend, Find 5 Differences and Spot 10 Differences, among many others titles. What draws attention is that they all had names similar to very successful and repercussion applications, with the purpose of deceiving users without anyone being able to realize it.
In the iOS store, more than 10 fraudulent applications were found in this same scheme, such as Shinning Gun, Fire-Wall, Ninja Critical Hit, Run Bridge, Racing Legend 3D and Wood Sculptor, for example. Both Google and Apple were warned about this fraud and removed the apps from their respective stores. Despite being great news, the warning is that there may be many other applications similar to these, which have not yet been detected by experts. On the HUMAN Security website, you can find the complete list of these apps so that Internet users can delete them from their devices.
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