SonicSpy, Latest Spyware to Infect Play Store Apps

Android marketplaces, including Google Play Store were found with over 1,000 applications that were contaminated with one malicious spyware strain since February.

The spyware is named SonicSpy a discovery of Lookout a mobile security company based in San Francisco. It is designed to dispatch text messages; take photos; peek into access points of WiFi; tap phone calls; and more. Very likely SonicSpy's place of origin is Iraq and is the creation of same hackers responsible for SpyNote that Palo Alto Networks spotted in 2016.

Google Play Store, which distributes official software, is trying best for eliminating all malware; however, as malicious software cropping up is so numerous it makes the task extremely difficult. In fact, for 3rd-party application stores it is even more difficult. It has been estimated that the number of infected applications due to the said malicious program is more than a thousand.

Troy Chat and Hulk Messenger are 2 other applications in Play that were found contaminated. Those have been removed. Now it isn't quite known whether the developer pulled out the applications alternatively Google eradicated them following its discovery of the applications' spying capabilities. Rest over 4,000 applications, since February, are getting distributed via mediums of other kinds. According to Michael Flossman, security researcher at Lookout, those mediums possibly are alternative markets else specific text messages which contain some download link. Lookout says all of the applications have become part of the latest spyware family SonicSpy. Arstechnica.co.uk posted this online, dated August 13, 2017.

Notably, after SonicSpy infects an application, the user assumes he's communicating with a friend through messages, but the spyware may dispatch its own text messages, record microphone audios as well as phone calls, compromise the camera to take screenshots, while make outgoing phone calls too - all these at the direction of the hacker.

Lately, the company disclosed what way it was discarding malevolent applications from Play with the use of Artificial Intelligence. Even then a few applications do sneak inside the Store. It thus once again reminds Android users for maintaining caution regarding what 3rd-party applications they load onto their smart devices.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/17/2017