Apple and Google remove the malicious mobile applications from their application stores
Apple and Google drew up to 20 applications from their respective application stores after the safety researchers discovered that applications transported malware for data for almost a year.
Security researchers in Kaspersky said malwareNicknamed Sparkcat, has been active since March 2024. At first, the researchers found the malware in a food delivery application used in the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, but later found malware on 19 other unrelated applications, which , according to them, have been uploaded cumulatively more than 242,000 times via the Google Play Store.
Use of the code designed to capture text visible on user’s display – known as optical character recognition (OCR) – researchers found that malware had scanned image galleries on the devices of The victim for keywords to find recovery sentences for cryptocurrency wallets in various languages, including English, Chinese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Using malware to capture the recovery sentences of a victim, the attackers could take full control over the portfolio of a victim and steal their funds, the researchers revealed.
Malware could also allow personal information to extraction from screenshots, such as messages and passwords, the researchers said.
After receiving the researchers’ report, Apple drawn the compromise applications of the APP Store last week, followed by Google.
“All the applications identified have been deleted from Google Play, and the developers have been prohibited,” Google spokesperson Ed Fernandez told Techcrunch.
Google’s spokesperson also confirmed that Android users were protected against known versions of this malicious software via the Google Integrated Précétation safety feature.
Apple did not respond to requests for comments.
Kaspersky spokesperson, Rosemarie Gonzales, told Techcrunch that, although the applications reported have been withdrawn from official application stores, the company’s telemetry data suggest that malware was also available from Other websites and unofficial application stores.
