LightsOut: Shining a Light On Malicious Flashlight Apps on Google Play

  • 5 January 2018
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January 5th, 2018  By Check Point Research Team
 

 Check Point researchers have detected a new type of adware roaming Google Play, the official app store of Google. The suspicious scripts overrides the user’s decision to disable ads showing outside of a legitimate context, and then, in many of the apps, hides its icon to hinder efforts to remove it. This is a purely malicious activity, as it has no other possible purpose other than eluding the user.
 
Dubbed ‘LightsOut’, the code hid itself in 22 different flashlight and utility apps, and reached a spread of between 1.5 million and 7.5 million downloads. Its purpose? To generate illegal ad revenue for its perpetrators at the expense of unsuspecting users.
 
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These scripts are malicious and Google Play needs to patch and resolve this problem

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