The specialists at ESET have recently discovered that there were more than 80 apps containing malicious software on the official Google app store. The apps were being disguised as mods for the largely popular Minecraft game.
It’s not been that much since the Minecraft name was connected to a scareware campaign, and now it seems there are more issues with the game. The official analysis, which you can find on the news page welivesecurity.com, states that people who are playing this game have been exposed to a number of 87 fake Minecraft mods on the app store Google Play. The gamers were annoyed with aggressive ads and even scam activity, and it was shown that 990,000 users have installed the fake mods until now.
A New Security Issue
The researchers at ESET divided the malicious activity found in the fake mods into two types: downloaders that display ads (identified as Android/TrojanDownloader.Agent.JL) and apps that redirect users to scam addresses (Android/FakeApp.FG).
For the first category, the specialists discovered 14 fake apps disguising as Minecraft mods, totaling almost 80,000 downloads. The reviews are poor, and no wonder, since they only have aggressive ads. The second category showed 73 apps that used redirects for scam websites. These ones gathered 910,000 installs in the last two months.
What to Do to Be Safe
Lukas Stefanko, who works as a malware researcher at the famous antivirus company, advised players to always choose official app markets. Moreover, you should be extra cautious if you download third-party apps for existing games or apps. Checking the popularity of the app by looking at the ratings, reviews and installs is always a good idea, since people will always complain about a bad app in the reviews. At the same time, if you notice an app behaves in a weird manner, do not click on any link and uninstall it as soon as possible.
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