A new Android scam campaign is ongoing. Researchers were actually able to find hundreds of malicious apps on the Google Play Store. This is an ad fraud we’re talking about, and it generated millions of dollars in profits.
A Trapdoor campaign was spread across a bunch of apps that 24 million people downloaded
It was spotted by Human Security researchers from the Satori team. It’s a Trapdoor campaign, and it used 455 applications and 183 command-and-control (C2) domains, based on the report.
The campaign was issued in seemingly benign apps, such as PDF readers and similar utility apps. They worked as intended, and there was nothing that would make a user suspect anything.
Soon after installation, however, these apps would throw users a pop-up window, saying they need to be updated. That update, needless to say, was fake. It triggered the downloading of an entirely different app. That app does its best to stay hidden, launches invisible WebViews, loads HTML5 domains under the attackers’ control, and then requests ads.
Fake ads would steal money from advertisers
Those ads are never seen by anyone, but the attackers steal money from advertisers, as well as companies using ad networks to promote their products and services.
According to the report, Trapdoor accounted for 659 million bid requests a day, which means advertisers were bidding on 659 million fake ad opportunities daily. Apps that have been used for this scam have been downloaded more than 24 million times.
Google removed them from the Play Store
Google quickly removed the apps after being notified about them by the Satori team. You can still find a full list of apps here, though, in case you have some of them installed. Needless to say, you should uninstall them as soon as possible.
“Trapdoor is a reminder that threats to the digital advertising ecosystem do not neatly fall into single categories,” said Human Security. The company also added: “By fusing malvertising distribution with hidden ad fraud monetization, Trapdoor creates a pipeline in which each stage fuels the next: malvertising drives secondary app installs, those apps generate fraudulent ad revenue, and that revenue can fund further malvertising campaigns.”
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