According to Thread Fabric, there are five Android apps that you must delete immediately if you have installed them on your Android phone. The apps have already been removed from the Google Play store, but will remain on yours Android phone if you downloaded them and never uninstalled the apps. These five apps contain a banking trojan called Anatsa that was seen last summer in various countries, including the US.
The problem with these apps is that once they’re on your phone, an attacker can take control of your phone without you knowing. Not only can an attacker access your personal information, but they can also make payments from your banking apps. In other words, these applications, loaded with the Anatsa Trojan, can drain your bank account. The apps involved had been downloaded between 150,000 and 200,000 times since November before Google pulled them from the Play Store.
These apps, called droppers, are originally listed in the Play Store and contain additional malicious apps in their content. The dropper loads these applications onto the infected handset. A previous campaign last year resulted in the use of the Anatsa Trojan in the US, UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The new campaign, which targets the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, uses dropper apps designed to appear in the “Top New Free” categories of the Google Play Store.
An example of one of the dropper applications used with the Anatsa banking trojan
Worse still, since the last campaign, dropper apps have evolved to help evade detection thanks to a “multi-stage infection process” that helps them bypass security measures found in Android versions up to Android 13.
Five apps to look for on your phone include:
- Phone Cleaner – File Explorer
- PDF viewer – File Explorer
- PDF reader – viewer and editor
- Phone Cleaner: File Explorer
- PDF Reader: File Manager
If you have any of these apps on your Android phone, it is essential that you uninstall them immediately. Also, if any of these five appear on your Android phoneyou may want to go through your bank statements with a fine-tooth comb to look for any suspicious activity.
How can you avoid installing malicious apps? Always check Play Store reviews for red flags. Complaints about battery drain, slow phone performance, and heat to the touch are usually big warning signs. Also, you can see the comments of those who have installed the app and find that it is not doing the task for which they installed it.