HYDERABAD: Fake beauty apps on Google Play made by Chinese hackers, which in reality were ladened with adwares and spywares, were found to be targeting Indian users, found a recent research by Avast.
In the research “Adware hiding behind beauty filters on Google Play Store”, Avast’s mobile threat intelligence team “apklab.io” found that fake apps named Pro Selfie Beauty Camera, Selfie Beauty Camera Pro, and Pretty Beauty Camera - 2019, “primarily include adware the aggressively display ads and spyware capable of making calls, listening to calls, retrieving the device’s location and changing device’s network state.”
These apps which claim to add filters to selfie photos and modify the appearance of the selfies, all have more than 5 lakh installs, except for Pretty Beauty Camera - 2019, which had over 10 lakh installs. “The apps have thousands of reviews, most of which rate the apps poorly, commenting that the apps don’t really work but instead display ads. There are, however, some positive reviews of the apps which are most likely fake,” the report said.
According to Avast’s internal data from the the reviews on Google Play Store, it concluded that most victims were from India.
The research also found that the apps, once after installation, was very difficult to remove. It said, “..their icons are often hidden from the Android Launcher screen, making it impossible for users of Android with the “drag and drop” function to delete the app by dragging it into the trash bin.”
“This is likely done so that the people behind the app profit from the ads shown to users. For each ad displayed, the bad actors make money from advertisers. So, they make it hard for users to delete the app so that they can show more ads and make more money,” the report opined.
It concluded that the apps were developed by Chinese developers through app’s official email address “songshijie1971110@gmail.com”, which the report said was the “Romanisation of a Chinese name, and there also some simplified Chinese words in the code”. The Avast researchers also found that the launchers that the apps checked in order to hide their app icon include launchers available in China.