Minecraft “mods” infected on the Play Store …
When you’re an extremely popular game like Minecraft, unfortunately, there is a risk of being hijacked for the benefit of certain criminal enterprises. As was to be expected, hackers decided to surf on the fame of the title and its very large number of players to infect millions of Android devices with malware.
To do this, the hackers had the idea of integrating malware within fake Minecraft game mods, available for download from the Google Play Store. In any case, this is what the security researchers of the Kaspersky company report, after having investigated the phenomenon. In detail, these mods all house a variant of the same adware. In other words, if the malware is different, the result remains the same: flood the smartphone with advertising spam constantly, until the device is completely unusable. And pocket precious advertising revenue in the process.
” Malicious apps repeatedly opened the device’s browser to display flash advertisements, as well as to play YouTube videos and launch Google Play app pages, which could expose the victim to other threats, ” explain the researchers in the columns of the site TechRadar.
Read also: 10 tips to protect your smartphone against viruses and hacking – Infographic
One million devices infected with these Minecraft mods
In total, Kaspersky experts discovered on the Play Store 20 mods infected between July and November 2020. Worse still, it seems that the hackers have succeeded, since according to Kapersky’s predictions, this malware has infected more than a million Android devices. And these pirates are obviously not ready to stop there, with new Minecraft mods appearing regularly on the Play Store.
Despite everything, Kaspersky makes sure to warn the Google teams when a new infected mod is detected. The Mountain View firm has already removed several infected mods from its marketplace. As a reminder, this is not the first time that Minecraft has been hijacked by cybercriminals to trap millions of game fans.
In November 2020, security firm Avast reported a high number of malicious apps centered around Minecraft, including offering additional in-game content and other features. Available for free for a time, users then had to pay overpriced subscriptions ($ 30 per week) to take advantage of these additions. The time to cancel the procedure, the pirates had time to grab a few hundred euros.
This is not the first time that a games app has been deliberately infected with viruses and other trojans, we remember the time when we had dozens of Fortnite APKs infected by the dozen, but the fact that we find them now on the Play Store is nothing reassuring …
Source: TechRadar
