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Google purges 20 Trojan Horse Play Store apps for spying on users

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By John Glenday | Reporter

July 29, 2017 | 2 min read

Google has taken decisive action against 20 Play Store apps after they were found to harbor malicious code capable of spying on those who downloaded the software.

Google Play

Google purges 20 Trojan Horse Play Store apps for spying on users

Each of the apps was found to be monitoring emails, texts, voice calls and cameras of infected phones with around 100 customers thought to have been duped into downloading the ‘Lipizzan’ spyware in a major cyber security failing.

Each of the apps in question is believed to have circumvented security measures designed to block spying by exploiting vulnerabilities in older versions of the Android operating system which lack up-to-date defences.

In a blog post Google wrote: “Lipizzan is a multi-stage spyware product capable of monitoring and exfiltrating a user’s email, SMS messages, location, voice calls, and media. We have found 20 Lipizzan apps distributed in a targeted fashion to fewer than 100 devices in total and have blocked the developers and apps from the Android ecosystem.”

Infected users were at risk of being monitored from their phone’s microphone and camera with criminals also able to raid device information and files for their own purposes.

Cyber attacks have become a growing concern, affecting everyone from individual users to global corporations such as WPP which saw its own systems infiltrated by hackers.

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