Google has removed 8 dangerous and malicious crypto currencing applications from its Play Store.
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| Screenshot of one of the fake cryptocurrency apps still available on Google Play Store | Source: trendmicro.com |
With more people interested in learning how cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), BItcoin Cash (BTC cash), Etherum (ETH) work, cyber criminals are taking advantage of such knowledge to trick innocent and unsuspecting internet users into installing malicious apps on their smartphones which contains dangerous malware and adware.
The good thing is that these malicious actors have been identified and Google has acted swiftly to remove them from playstore.
CyberSecurity firm, Trend Micro in a report stated that “we recently discovered eight deceptive mobile apps that masquerade as cryptocurrency cloud mining applications (detected by Trend Micro as AndroidOS_FakeMinerPay and AndroidOS_FakeMinerAd), where users can earn cryptocurrency by investing money into a cloud-mining operation.
“However, upon analysis, we discovered that these malicious apps only trick victims into watching ads, paying for subscription services that have an average monthly fee of US$15, and paying for increased mining capabilities without getting anything in return.
We have reported our findings to Google Play, and the apps have been promptly removed from the Play Store.”
Google may have removed the malicious applications from Play Store, but these apps may well have already been downloaded on your phone.
So, what you need to do is check out your phone for them and delete quickly.
The following is a list of the 8 malicious apps that Google has removed from the Play Store.
8 malicious Cryptominining apps Removed From Google Play Store.
• BitFunds – Crypto Cloud Mining
• Bitcoin Miner – Cloud Mining
• Bitcoin(BTC) – Pool Mining Cloud Wallet
• Crypto Holic – Bitcoin Cloud Mining
• Daily Bitcoin Rewards – Cloud Based Mining System
• Bitcoin 2021
• MineBit Pro - Crypto Cloud Mining & btc miner
• Ethereum (ETH) - Pool Mining Cloud
Two of these are even paid apps that users need to purchase; Crypto Holic – Bitcoin Cloud Mining costs US$12.99 to download, while Daily Bitcoin Rewards – Cloud Based Mining System costs US$5.99.
Trend Micro’s analysis also showed that no actual mining activity was carried out by the apps – rather, “fake mining activity on the apps’ user interface (UI) is carried out via a local mining simulation module that includes a counter and some random functions.”
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