ESET researchers have discovered over 80 malicious applications that "disguise" as mods for Minecraft, counting almost millions of installations in the official app download store.
Some time ago Minecraft was associated with a scareware campaign, and again today, ESET researchers report another case of abuse of the popular application.
According to the official analysis on ESET Welivesecurity.com, at Google Play There are 87 fake Minecraft mods, which target players of this game who use the Android platform, harassing them with aggressive ads and scams. So far, about 990.000 users have installed these fake mods.
ESET researchers have divided the malicious activity associated with fake Minecraft mods into two main categories: downloaders, which display ads and are detected by ESET as Android/TrojanDownloader.Agent.JL, and fake applications, που ανακατευθύνουν τους χρήστες σε scam ιστοσελίδες, και ανιχνεύονται από την ESET ως Android/FakeApp.FG.
As for Android / TrojanDownloader.Agent.JL, ESET reports 14 fake mods that are dressed in mods for Minecraft, having recorded up to 80.000 facilities. As these fake mods applications are only responsible for displaying aggressive ads, bad reviews are common.
Regarding Android/FakeApp.FG, ESET reports 73 cases of redirects to scam websites, counting 910.000 installations, between January and March 2017. Once installed, the apps display a screen with a download button. Clicking the button does not download any mod, instead the user is redirected to one by clicking here which opens into one Browser and displays any type of annoying content.
"To avoid being cheated by fake apps and malware, you always choose officially app download stores" reminds users Closeš Štefanko, researcher Malware of ESET.
"Be very careful when downloading applications from third-party vendors that offer additional features to existing applications. It also helps to check how popular an app is by facility numbers, ratings and, most importantly, the content of ratings - in the case of specific apps, low ratings and angry reviews should be a pretty good indicator. of their unreliability ".
Η complete analysis of fake mods for Minecraft on Google Play is available at WeLiveSecurity.com.
