Goldoson Android Malware Infects Over 100 Million Google Play Store Downloads

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 3:38:00 Dan google , android , malware

A new Android malware strain named Goldoson has been detected in the official Google Play Store spanning more than 60 legitimate apps that collectively have over 100 million downloads.

An additional eight million installations have been tracked through ONE store, a leading third-party app storefront in South Korea.

The rogue component is part of a third-party software library used by the apps in question and is capable of gathering information about installed apps, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-connected devices, and GPS locations.

"Moreover, the library is armed with the functionality to perform ad fraud by clicking advertisements in the background without the user's consent," McAfee security researcher SangRyol Ryu said in a report published last week.

What's more, it includes the ability to stealthily load web pages, a feature that could be abused to load ads for financial profit. It achieves this by loading HTML code in a hidden WebView and driving traffic to the URLs.

More at https://thehackernews.com/2023/04/goldoson-android-malware-infects-over.html

About the author

Dan

I'm a long-time user and enthusiast of open source software and espouse the philosophy that software code should be open (readable). So that everyone can see what happens behind the scenes while we use our electronic devices every day.