“We're going to warn a million people who may have been exposed to these applications, which doesn't necessarily mean they were hacked,” said David Agranovich, director of Meta's cybersecurity team, during a press conference.
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The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta has mapped more than 400 “evil” applications since the beginning of the year. They are available for smartphones operated with the operating services of Apple and Google, iOS and Android, respectively.
“These applications were present in Google Play Store and the App Store Apple, and posed as photo editing tools, games, VPN and other services”, the company specified in a statement.
Once installed on the phone, these applications asked Facebook users for their credentials to use the features.
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“They tried to encourage the provision of people's confidential information, to allow hackers to access their accounts”, summarized Agranovich, who assessed that the developers of these applications were looking for other passwords, not just Facebook.
“The objective seemed to be relatively indiscriminate,” he highlights. It was about “getting as many passwords as possible.”
The company stated that it shared its findings with Apple and the Google.
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A Apple did not respond to AFP requests, as the Google claimed to have removed most of the applications mentioned by Meta from the Play Store.
“None of the applications identified in the report are available on the Google Play,” wrote a spokesperson for Google to AFP.
More than 40% of the applications indicated were used for photo editing. Others were simple tools, like turning your cell phone into a flashlight, for example.
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Agranovich recommended that users be careful when an application asks for passwords for no valid reason or does promeThis is “too good to be true”.
(To AFP)
