Android is the largest and most popular app store for devices, but recently security researchers found 331 dangerous apps in it, which were bypassing the security of Android 13. All these apps were stealing users’ data. Crores of people have downloaded this app
This cyber attack was named “Vapour” operation, which was discovered by the IAS Threat Lab in early 2024. Initially, 180 apps were identified, which were sending more than 200 million fake ad requests. Later, a security company called Bitdefender increased the number to 331 apps and warned that these apps display out-of-context advertisements and conduct phishing attacks to steal users’ login credentials and credit card information.
• How were the dangerous apps working?
Able to hide oneself: Many applications change their names in system settings to appear like legitimate applications, such as Google Voice.
Run in background: These applications can launch themselves without any user input and hide from the recent tasks menu.
Full-screen ads: Some apps displayed full-screen advertisements and disabled Android’s back button or gestures.
Fake login pages: These apps tried to steal credit cards and passwords by showing fake login pages for Facebook, YouTube and other websites.
• Google removed all suspicious applications
Following the report of security company Bitdefender, Google has removed all these apps from the Google Play Store. “All apps identified in this report have been removed from Google Play,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to Bleeping Computer.
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