Joker Malware Again 🃏

The Belgian Police warned about the return of the ‘Joker’ virus , which attacks Android devices and hides itself in various applications on the Google Play Store. This malware is capable of subscribing the user to payment services without their authorization and emptying their bank accounts without them noticing.

The ‘Joker’ malware became famous in 2017 for infecting and robbing its victims by hiding in different applications. Since then, the Google Play Store defense systems have removed around 1,700 apps with the ‘Joker’ malware before they were downloaded by users.

In September 2020, the Joker virus was found in 24 Android applications that registered more than 500 thousand downloads before being removed. It is estimated that that time it affected more than 30 countries including the United States, Brazil and Spain.

How Joker Works ?

The ‘Joker’ Trojan virus belongs to a family of malware known as Bread , whose objective is to hack cell phone bills and authorize operations without the user’s consent. This virus can enter text messages ,contacts and other information on the infected smartphone.

It starts with, apps infected with ‘Joker’ or another Malware from this family carried out fraud via SMS , but then began to attack online payments .

Apps that has a Risk of Joker

The harmful applications that the Google Play Store eliminated after detecting that they contained the ‘Joker’ virus are:

Auxiliary Message
Element Scanner
Fast Magic SMS
Free CamScanner
Go Messages
Super Message
Super SMS
Travel Wallpapers

But there is a warning that more apps are affected and, therefore, millions of users who do not know that they are already victims of this cyber fraud.

Zscaler cited and made public the names of 16 other apps that, according to their analysis, also contain this malicious code: