Google always tries to prevent Android from malicious apps and provide its users with complete data privacy. But still, malicious apps and viruses somehow manage to make their way to the Google Play Store.
According to the latest report, Google recently removed a number of malicious apps that were downloaded more than 5.8 million times and have stolen the Facebook password credentials of Android users.
These malicious apps include Processing Photo, App Lock Keep, App Lock Manager, Horoscope Pi, Inwell Fitness, Lockit Master, Rubbish Cleaner, Horoscope Daily, and PIP Photo. The report informed that the combined install count for these apps was more than 5.8 million. Using these apps requires you to connect or link your Facebook account to the apps and this leads such apps to steal your account information.
Anti-virus software development company Doctor Web first uncovered these malicious apps and viruses and reported them to the search engine giant. Although Google has eliminated many of them and is still working on it, some malicious apps are yet present on the Play Store for download.
Also, there is a high possibility that these malicious app developers have stolen user credentials from other platforms similarly.
Doctor Web also posted regarding this incident on its official website and claims that the malicious programs all received settings for stealing logins and passwords for Facebook accounts, according to an analysis. It would have been easy, however, for the attackers to modify the trojan’s settings and command it to load the website of a different legitimate service. Using a phishing site could have generated a highly convincing fake login form. In this way, the trojans could have stolen login information from any service.
Google’s user count is very huge and for maintaining its big name, the company needs to find a way to counter these trojan problems soon. And this is exactly what we expect from Google and its developer team.
