Already alerted several months ago to the presence of a virus in applications, Google has only just deleted eight infected applications. They have accumulated more than three million downloads, i.e. as many Android smartphones affected by this malware.
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Even though Google strengthens the protection of its Play storehackers still manage to publish apps pox. This is what discovered Evina. This company specializing in cybersecurity has thus identified the Autolycos malware in at least eight Android applications. It may not seem like much, but it represents some three million downloads, and potentially as many smartphones infected!
To find out if your smartphone is contaminated, Evina lists the eight applications affected by this virus: Vlog Star Video Editor; Creative 3D launcher ; Wow Beauty Camera; GIF Emoji Keyboard; Freeglow camera; Coco Camera; Funny Camera; Razer Keyboard & Theme. If you had installed these applications, you must immediately uninstall themthen skipanti-virus to remove all traces of the malware.
The malware reads your SMS
On the side of Google, we immediately deleted the eight applications, and no one can install them anymore. What is damaging is that this same expert had already warned Google of the presence of the malware in 2021, and it would therefore have been necessary to wait for a second alert for the applications to be deleted.
As for the malware itself, what does it do? First, it installs itself in the background, and it is able to launch Internet addresses in a Navigator distant. This makes it almost invisible to the user, and allows him to launch infected links. Also, during installation, all eight apps were asking for permission toaccess SMS messages when installing on the smartphone. Which then allowed the malware to access people’s text messages…
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