"Beautifiers" from Google Play infected smartphones with viruses (5 photos)

Google cleaned branded online storeGoogle Play applications, removing almost three dozen malicious "beautifiers". All of these applications should have just refined selfies, eliminating flaws and making people in the photos more attractive. In fact, they added not only different effects to images, but also malicious codes along with them. The list included Horizontal Beauty Camera, Pro Beauty Camera, Beauty Camera and others. Some have collected over a million downloads.

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Once the user installed the application,a lot of ads appeared on the smartphone, say, pictures on the entire display when unlocked. Some advertising turned out to be fraudulent: it ensured the victory in a non-existent competition in exchange for different information. Sometimes applications, without asking, installed porn-players. Moreover, if a person even paid a subscription, the “strawberry” would not start anyway.

Part of the "beautifiers" krala customphotos and other information for attackers servers. All this can then be used to maintain fake accounts. Among the theft are personal data and passwords to bank cards of the victims. To remove any of these applications is extremely difficult. After downloading, the program icon does not appear in the smartphone’s menu, so it’s impossible to send it to the cart in the standard way.

Managed to collect a lot of negative feedbackMalicious applications were spotted by Trend Micro, a digital security company. After that, Google removed them from Google Play. Before downloading anything, users are advised to read the comments. And at the slightest suspicion, refrain from downloading questionable software.

Source: trendmicro.com, arstechnica.com