Autolycos malware is now available on the Google Play Store

Maxime Ingrao, a security researcher at Evina, has discovered a new family of malware that can infect applications Android via Google Play.

It is called Autolycos (Autolykos) — from eponymous Greek mythological figure, known for her mastery of theft and deception. This is exactly what it does malware.

Since June 2021, Ingrao has identified eight infected apps on the Play Store — which have been downloaded more than three million times.

How does Autolycos work?

According to Evina's report, the Autolycos malware's main goals are to enroll users in premium Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) services, without their knowledge or consent.

Here's how Autolycos can access a PIN verification code by reading a phone's notifications:

The way the malware works makes it difficult for Google to distinguish infected apps from normal ones. This is also the reason why it has not been detected for so long.

To scam as many users as possible, the scammers behind Autolycos promote the apps on Facebook and Instagram pages.

Ingrao identified 74 ad campaigns for one of the infected apps: the Razer Keyboard & Theme app.

It retrieves a JSON on the C2 address: 68.183.219.190/pER/y

It then executes the urls, for some steps it executes the urls on a remote browser and returns the result to include it in the requests

This allows it not to have a Webview and to be more discrete pic.twitter.com/v5S6fUjx7M

— Maxime Ingrao (@IngraoMaxime) July 13, 2022

Traces of the malicious app have been found in Asia and several European ones countries, όπως την Ισπανία, την Αυστρία, την Πολωνία και τη Γερμανία — κάτι που δείχνει μια πολύ ανησυχητική extension.

What are the infected apps?

Evina and Ingao provided a list of the eight known apps that contain the malware:

Razer Keyboard & Theme — 10.000+ downloads
Vlog Star Video Editor — 1.000.000+ downloads
Funny Camera — 500.000+ dowloads
Coco Camera — 1.000+ downloads
Creative 3D Launcher — 1.000.000+ downloads
GIF Keyboard — 100.000+ downloads
Freeglow Camera — 5.000+ downdoads
Wow Camera — 100+ downloads

Interestingly, Ingao notified Google in June 2021. The company acknowledged the problem, but it took six months to remove the first six apps. This prompted the researcher to post the apps on Twitter.

On July 13, Google removed the last two: Funny Camera and Razer Keyboard & Theme.

Read more in Evira's PDF.