Malware apps in the Android ecosystem are set to undergo another clean-up after Google took down these two apps from the Play Store for security reasons.
WARNING Android users.
A recent warning has been reported for Android users. This is concerning the detection of the Necro Trojan virus in several apps downloaded from the Google Play Store. The malicious virus is designed to steal data from mobile devices and transfer it to the hackers, aside from data theft, which also secretly installs applications containing additional malware on the device it infects. It was confirmed that the Necro Trojan virus exists in two mobile applications available on Google Play Store-two modified versions of Spotify and WhatsApp. Google responded quickly, treading on the pretext of pulling down these infected apps from its app shelf. Besides the above incident, the Trojan may also reside in other popular gaming applications including Minecraft among others.
Previous Cases
First, the Necro Trojan virus has been found to first appear in the PDF creator app CamScanner in 2019 with more than 100 million downloads on the Google Play Store. Though a security patch cleared it, this very dangerous virus, like an enemy that never dies, has made its way back into two other apps-Wuta Camera and Max Browser-which Google has removed from the Play Store.
There is also a threat from security researchers to users to not download free and unofficial versions of popular apps from third-party websites, as this has always posed a risk to them. Several apps, including Spotify, WhatsApp, Minecraft, Stumble Guys, Car Parking Multiplayer, and Melon Sandbox, have been infected with the Necro Trojan virus in modded versions.
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Users are therefore advised to delete the malfunctioning apps immediately and not to download any version of the application which has been tampered with. Besides these, they must avoid third-party sources and download all their apps from Google Play.
It encourages all iPhone and iPad owners to look at their iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 in order to check for updates. The bugs were reportedly affecting devices running iOS before iOS 18 and iPadOS before iPadOS 18.
These may allow an attacker a path to sensitive data exposure, bypass some security controls, and perform cross-site scripting attacks. For older devices, one should update it to iOS 17.7 or iPadOS 17.7 if they are not eligible to iOS 18. These new releases worldwide close those vulnerabilities that make the older devices even more safe.
