Billions of Android users have been warned about dangerous bugs – don’t get caught

EXPERTS have warned billions of Android smartphone owners to lower their guard as a notorious hacker attack is still “increasingly active”.

It revolves around fake websites that promote fake apps from well-known brands like Google Wallet, PayPal, and Snapchat.

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But the websites are rip offs from Google Play and others.

Downloading the apps presented on it exposes you to devastating malware.

It is part of a campaign called ERMAC which is able to steal your sensitive bank login details.

The Android banking Trojan was first discovered in late August 2021.

However, the latest version has been found to target 467 applications.

And the person behind it apparently rented it out to scammers to use on a cybercrime forum for $5,000 a month, according to Cyble investigators.

Experts have previously warned that ERMAC 2.0 rogue apps make various permission requests from your device.

If these permissions are granted, the attackers can take complete control of a victim’s device.

Other permissions can give the hacker SMS access, contacts access, system alert window creation, audio recording, or full read and write access to the storage.

Certain permissions can also create a list of apps installed on the victim’s device and share this data with the hacker’s C2 server.

This can lead to a complex phishing scheme that collects the user’s data when they try to log into the affected app.

Users are advised to think twice about where they download apps from.

And if you see an app on a website that tempts you, look at the URL.

Dubious websites have dodgy URLs, similar to authentic sites.

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