Beware of malicious applications.
The Google Play Store has just been singled out by Avast and more precisely 151 applications from the official store.
The cybersecurity company warns of a major campaign called "UltimaSMS".
The malware in the offending applications is based on the "Joker" malware, a virus that remains dormant for several days before it starts collecting users' personal data and subscribing to paid SMS services.
Malware that adapts to the country
Joker is also able to determine the country in which a phone is located thanks to its IMEI, its identification number.
This allows the malware to adapt on a case-by-case basis to each device by leveraging the paid services available in each country.
The software is thus able to recover small sums of money over time, sometimes too small to be detected quickly, allowing it to operate for a longer period of time.
Some victims were thus confronted with overbilling of more than 40 dollars.
According to Avast, these 151 apps were downloaded a total of almost 10.5 million times.
Google's security team have now removed them, but they remain installed on a large number of devices and are available on alternative stores.
If you have encountered one of the applications listed below, remove it immediately then use an antivirus to detect any remaining traces.
Then check with your operator that you are no longer subscribed to unknown paid services.
Finally, Avast recommends deactivating the premium SMS option with your operator in order to avoid these types of unpleasant surprises in the future.
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