Several new Play Store Apps spread Joker, Facestealer and Coper Malware

On Monday, Google has taken measures to terminate dozens of apps on Play Store that were found spreading Joker, Facestealer, and Coper Malware families via the virtual marketplace.

While Android is known to be a trustworthy source for discovering and installing apps, threat actors have found ways to sneak past security barriers developed by Google in hopes of luring unsuspecting users into downloading malware-laced apps.

Researchers Viral Gandhi and Himanshu Sharma in a Monday report have said that Joker is one of the most prominent malware families that are targeting Android devices.

“Despite public awareness of this particular malware, it keeps finding its way into Google’s official app store by regularly modifying the malware’s trace signatures including updates to the code, execution methods, and payload-retrieving techniques,” they said according to The Hacker News.

Joker is designed to subscribe users to unnecessary paid services or make calls to premium numbers, while also assembling SMS messages, contact lists, and device information. It was observed first in the Play Store in 2017.

“A total of 53 Joker downloader apps have been identified by the two cybersecurity firms, with the applications downloaded cumulatively over 330,000 times. These apps typically pose as SMS, photo editors, blood pressure monitor, emoji keyboards, and translation apps that, in turn, request elevated permissions for the device to carry out its operations,” a source as per The Hacker News.