Over ten million users have been tricked into installing one fake Samsung app titled “Updates for Samsung” that promises firmware updates, but actually redirects users to a website that contains ads and charges for firmware downloads.
Ο Alexey Kuprin, malware analyst at CSIS Security Group has informed the Google Play Store after publishing a report on the behavior of the application.
The application takes advantage of the difficulty in firmware and operating system updates for phones of Samsung, and so it seems that millions of people have installed it.
The "Updates for Samsung" application promises to solve this problem and especially novice users choose to install it so that they can receive frequent and easy firmware and OS updates.
But according to Kuprins, the app has nothing to do with Samsung, it only loads the domain updato [.] Com into a WebView component (Android browser).
In application reviews, you can see hundreds of users complaining that the site has infected their device with ads, while most say they can not find what they are looking for.
The website is said to offer free and on payment Samsung firmware updates, but after checking the app's source code, Kuprins discovered that it limits the speed of free downloads to 56 KBps, and some of those downloads end up not completing.
Of course, after the "unfortunate" free download, the application launches a package worth $ 34,99 so that users can download all the files.
Apart from the above, the application does not follow the rules of the Play Store and uses its own payment system, exposing users' data to third parties, since it does not use Google's protected payment channel.
We should mention that the app is not malware in the traditional sense of the word, as it does not perform malicious actions on behalf of the user or without their consent. The best words to describe the modus operandi are “fraud”, or “adware".
And with 10.000.000 facilities, the scam seems to be very successful.
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