Windows Malware Invades Android Apps

Although it's not often that we hear about Windows malware affecting Android apps, apparently, it is happening to 132 applications which were available on the Play Store. According to Palo Alto Networks security firm, all of these apps have Indonesian developers. Having said that, they also assured that in spite of the apps originating from the same geographical area, the developers are most likely not connected with each other. In fact, it is very likely that the developers are not even aware of the malware and were being victimized themselves.

The malicious code within the applications are in the form of HTML documents hidden inside other HTML documents; hailed as "tiny hidden IFrames." These documents are responsible for linking out to established harmful domains from inside the applications. If you are wondering what harm these could cause, Palo Alto explains that the malware can be used to, "modify the app's internal logic, i.e., adding rooting utility, declaring additional permissions, or dropping malicious APK file, to escalate their capabilities."

The good news is that Google has already removed these potentially harmful apps from the Play Store now.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)