Dangerous Popular Apps Copies, delete them immediately

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Social media apps have now just become the source of delivering malicious messages, and software to the victims of cybercrimes. The malicious content that is in need of delivery to the targeted users is customized according to the sort of victim they are targeting.

The targeted victims get into the trap and fall for the tricks of the attackers. In such cases, we hear all day long mostly every day nowadays. That’s because upgraded technology not only manages to provide opportunities to the software developers but the active cybercriminals got the chance to upgrade their skills and techniques to breach data and resources out of open sources and several places. One of those cases has emerged in front of us. Let’s continue.

Android, India, Developers

Users of Android devices may find it difficult to gulp that android apps are not safe anymore even the most popular and secure apps that you use. Some of them are currently in the eyes of adversaries that only have the task of breaching confidential data of innocent users, and threatening them to get monetary benefits.

Some of the adversaries took the advantage of people’s trust in reputed brands and applications that save the users’ data on the cloud-based platforms. These platforms are fully secured enough to store as much data the users want to save online, but for that, the cloud platforms companies ask for an amount of subscription fee in order to increase the space that is given to the particular user.

Adversaries make fake apps with some high skills of development that can make the apps look the same as the original apps available. Meta, one of the biggest platforms of online media services providers, is now being alerted to malicious, dangerous content which has taken some of the popular social media platforms into controversy. E.g. – WhatsApp, and YouTube for Android device users of phones and tablets.

Meta, Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report, 2022

Cloned versions of some popular apps are having the new draconian malware injected into them. Not only WhatsApp and YouTube, but some similar platforms such as Signal, Telegram, and custom messaging apps are also on the list of potential targets for online criminals.

According to recent reports, the Bitter APT Hacking Group was the one after the unleashing of the Drakaries Malware, named after Game of Thrones Battle Cry for Dragons. Many countries have already become the victims of this attack including:

the UK
New Zealand
India
Pakistan

Meta report

“We noticed Bitter (hacking group) using a new custom Android malware “Drakaries”. Everybody knows that there’s a feature available in the Android Operating System specifically for users with special abilities using this accessibility service.

How dangerous is this Android malware:

If we talk about the previous incidences then several times these kinds of attacks have taken place, wildly. Due to that, many users have lost their data to someone who in exchange demands money or some favors according to their needs and intentions. But if we talk about Dracarys then….

The usage of this malware allows the users the control of databases to steal users’ confidential data. The malware can steal

call logs
contact information
files
SMS texts
geolocation
user’s device details

It’s also capable of taking private photos and turning on the Android device’s microphone while installing apps without users’ permission. That could be so scary for someone who holds the responsibility for several people’s confidential data.

The most vicious thing it can do is that this malware can also bypass the authentication process and avoid any detection via anti-virus systems. Anti-virus systems are specially customized to steal data from certain people and are trusted by companies to save their data from being breached by unauthorized attackers. The report also says “While malware functionality is fairly common.”

Advice For Android Users

To be secured from such malware attacks, avoid downloading unofficial or fake apps for services like WhatsApp, YouTube, Telegram, and Signal. Moreover, you shouldn’t download such apps from third-party APK websites. That’s because on such sites there is no guarantee of the authenticity, and legitimacy of such apps. According to cybersecurity experts, users of android devices should confirm that the app they downloaded should only be downloaded from official platforms such as Google Play Store.