Android malware downloaded 4.2 million times: downloaded?

Android malware ExpensiveWall: Although the Google uses machine learning to detect malicious apps, 50 of them were discovered in the Play Store. The malicious apps had 4,2 million downloads.

Η Google has now removed apps that allowed crooks to make money by sending secret messages to SMS and charging users with paid online services without knowing it.

Android malware ExpensiveWall:

Applications were discovered by her researchers Check Point, who named the ExpensiveWall malware because one of the applications that used it was called Lovely Wallpaper. Malware is a variant of malware found in a photo application that McAfee discovered in January.

Once applications that are infected by ExpensiveWall are installed, they acquire the phone number of the device and start subscriptions to a series of paid SMS services. A victim said he was charged 10 € per month, according to criticisms in one of the applications.

Google quickly removed apps after Check Point's notification on August 7. However, a few days later, another application that contained ExpensiveWall in the Play Store was detected and managed to infect more than 5.000 devices, according to Check Point.

The company better safetys has provided a list of apps infected by ExpensiveWall Android malware and advises users to remove them manually, as they can apparently be installed even after Google has removed them from the Play Store.

It's not clear when apps started to be distributed by Google store, but some of them have been uploaded to Google Play by 2015.

The most downloaded of infected applications is called I Love Filter, and it was discovered in January. It had descended up to five million times.

To prevent crawling by Google's protection software, ExpensiveWall developers used so-called "packers" to encrypt or compress a malicious file to make analysis more difficult. The variant discovered earlier this year was not packaged.

Malicious apps request permissions on Android to access SMS and the Internet. If user rights are granted, apps send key scams to scammers such as MAC address, IP address, and unique device IDs.

Android malware ExpensiveWall: Protection

See the list of infected apps with Android malware ExpensiveWall. Next to each application, you also see the number of downloads:

If you find that you have downloaded any of these, manually remove it and scan your device with some reliable and up-to-date security software.