Billions of Android users warned over dangerous mistake – don’t get caught out

EXPERTS have warned billions of Android smartphone owners not to drop their guard as a notorious hack attack is still "increasingly active".

It revolves around false websites promoting fake apps of popular brands like Google Wallet, PayPal, and Snapchat.

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But the web pages are ripoffs of Google Play and others.

If you download the apps presented on them you expose yourself to devastating malware.

It's part of a campaign known as ERMAC, which is capable of stealing your sensitive bank login details.

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

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But the latest version of has been found to target 467 applications.

And the person behind it was apparently renting it out to fraudsters to use on a cybercrime forum for $5,000 per month, according to investigators at Cyble.

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

These permissions, if granted, may enable the bad actors to take full control of a victim's device.

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Other permissions can get the hackers SMS access, contact access, system alert window creation, audio recording, or full storage read and write access.

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

This can result in a complex phishing scheme that harvests the user's data whenever they try to log onto the affected app.

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

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And if you do see an app listed on a web page you're tempted by, check out the URL.

Dubious web pages will have shady URLs similar to authentic sites.

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