Cybercriminals are once again focusing on Android devices to deceive unsuspecting individuals into disclosing their personal and financial details.
Users are being advised to uninstall compromised apps involved in a new scam that employs a sophisticated form of advertising fraud. By inundating apps with malicious advertisements, hackers can slow down the devices they have infiltrated while benefiting financially.
The recent attack, dubbed ‘SlopAds’, was discovered by the Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team. They identified 224 Android apps affected by this assault, which have collectively been downloaded over 38 million times from the Google Play Store.
Security experts from the team disclosed that they uncovered and disrupted a complex ad fraud and click fraud operation known as SlopAds. The threat actors behind SlopAds operate a group of 224 apps that have been downloaded from Google Play more than 38 million times across various countries and territories.
Google has successfully removed all problematic apps to prevent new users from falling victim to ad fraud. Individuals who may have downloaded apps containing the SlopsAds bug will receive notifications urging them to delete the apps.
To protect against future attacks, Android users are advised to keep Google’s Play Protect feature enabled in the app store. This feature will notify users of potentially corrupted applications before installation and block any subsequent apps displaying behavior associated with SlopAds.
Ad fraud not only affects device users but also legitimate advertisers and developers as hackers deceive networks into accepting their infected advertisements. Google emphasized that ad fraud involves generating ad interactions to deceive an ad network into believing the traffic is from genuine user interest, which constitutes invalid traffic.
Android users are urged to act promptly by removing any flagged infected apps to safeguard their devices.