Millions of Android users might have invited FalseGuide malware over to play

Despite major efforts that Google puts into cyber security, Google Play Store is not easy to secure. Over the last couple of months, different malware samples were detected in this online shop and got removed. However, before the discoveries took place, malicious applications were available in the store and managed to infect different numbers of users. According to recent calculations, over two million clients might have been misled into downloading rogue tools that carried FalseGuide malware.

A Russian developer was determined to be the founder of 5 malicious applications that attempted to include users into a botnet. These programs were first uploaded into Google Play Store sometime in the autumn of 2016, meaning that it took over 5 months to recognize them as unreliable. Over forty other malicious applications were not available for that long, but still managed to gain some clientele.

A malware sample going by the name of FalseGuide was concealed in all of the earlier mentioned apps. If users downloaded them from the official Google Play Store, they might have become a part of a vicious hackers’ plan. It appears that the main goal of these rogue tools was to involve their users into a botnet. As you might already know, this network is usually under supervision of crooks and they are able to influence devices that have somehow become a member.

All of the rogue applications were aimed at one specific audience: gamers. Guides for various types of gaming applications were discovered to be carrying FalseGuide malware. If it managed to enter your Android, there are several severe activities that hackers might have intended to inflict. First one is that once a computer is included into a botnet network, it will be controlled by an external force. Various types of attacks might have occurred, depending on what exactly crooks were trying to achieve. They could have initiated DDoS attacks or displayed deceptive advertisements.

A conventional belief that downloading programs from Google Play Store means that you will only install secure applications has been proven to be wrong. There had been a number of cases when applications were concluded to be involved in malicious plans of distributing some sort of malware: ransomware, adware or etc. This time, hackers attempted to create a botnet network. From the looks of it, they were quite successful as two million users are the estimated sum of people that might have been jeopardized.

Now, rogue applications have been deleted from the app store, but that does not mean that no more malicious content is hiding. If you care about your cyber security, we advise you to be extremely selective when it comes to installing new software tools. Android malware samples have become a popular trend for hackers to exploit: be careful not to become a part of their schemes.

Source: thesun.co.uk

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