Your Horoscope Says All Your Money is Going Away

[FrgMstr]

Lukas Sefanko on Twitter is better at predicting your future than than that astrology app 1500 of you just downloaded from Google Play. Seems that he identified more than a few of these horoscope apps that steal your SMS, call logs, and banking credentials. Stefanko has already reported these to Google, which immediately removed these from the Play Store. The malicious code has been named Herobot. Time for you knuckleheads to do a factory reset as removing the apps does not remove the malware. Bleeping Computer has a more thorough breakdown of the mayhem.

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An important aspect is that all three Trojans discovered by Stefanko enjoyed a low detection rate. At the time of writing, the malware piece with the highest detection rate on VirusTotal was recognized by 12 out of 60 antivirus products; for the least detected one, only six saw its true colors.

 

[scojer]

Why download an app for that?
You can just google your horror scope, so you don't need to download an app and get blasted with ads when you open it.

 

[Dekoth-E-]

Too late, I'm married with two kids. All my money is already gone. Checkmate horocope!

 

[viper1152012]

So McAfee detected it as well....... All be .

 

[Darunion]

Why download an app for that?
You can just google your horror scope, so you don't need to download an app and get blasted with ads when you open it.

Long ago I used to get apps for everything until i learned most just are web portals with ads and data tracking. Once I started creating launcher links to web pages, didn't need many apps. I feel more comfortable with google knowing everything about me lol

 

[HorseproofBacon]

Where is the list of apps? The page just links to a page that has a link to another page with no list of the 127 apps.

 

[Spidey329]

Long ago I used to get apps for everything until i learned most just are web portals with ads and data tracking. Once I started creating launcher links to web pages, didn't need many apps. I feel more comfortable with google knowing everything about me lol

Yep, it's not too difficult to spin up an app that uses a native framework to attach to a REST API (or for the super lazy, just wraps the actual mobile website).

I see people with tons of apps for niche stores and such. The advantages of an app vs web portal are mostly skewed towards the company providing it. It gives them more access to the system (not sandboxed in a browser). Heck, I see a ton of "simple" apps that request permissions for a ton of stuff they have no business asking for, like audio or camera.