If you have an Android smartphone and one of these 16 apps (or more) installed on it, you better hurry to delete them.
In fact, cybersecurity researchers employed by McAfee have unearthed a virus called Clicker which has the effect of seriously affecting the autonomy of your device.
Clicker… clicks on ads for you, without your knowledge!
It’s the kind of news that we would do without on a Sunday holiday, but that’s the way it is. 16 Android applications have been identified by McAfee as containing a malicious virus called Clicker. Before exposing you to its modus operandi, here is the list of the latter, with a basic but circumstantial advice: delete them if you have downloaded them.
- High-Speed Camera (com.hantor.CozyCamera)
- Smart Task Manager (com.james.SmartTaskManager)
- Flashlight+ (kr.caramel.flash_plus)
- 달력메모장 (com.smh.memocalendar)
- K-Dictionary (com.joysoft.wordBook)
- BusanBus (com.kmshack.BusanBus)
- Flashlight+ (com.candlencom.candleprotest)
- QuickNote (com.movinapp.quicknote)
- Currency Converter (com.smartwho.SmartCurrencyConverter)
- Joycode (com.joysoft.barcode)
- EzDica (com.joysoft.ezdica)
- Instagram Profile Downloader (com.schedulezero.instapp)
- Ez Notes (com.meek.tingboard)
- 손전등 (com.candlencom.flashlite)
- 계산기 (com.doubleline.calculation)
- Flashlight+ (com.dev.imagevault)
In fact, these are applications from the depths of the Play Store, from which they have since been removed. There are torches, notes or even a dictionary in this list. They accumulate, in total, more than 20 million downloads, including 15 million just for the first two of the list above. As for Clicker, its main feature is to click on advertising content… without you realizing it.
If your battery has been magically draining for some time, it may be Clicker’s fault
To make the trickery even finer, Clicker does not activate after the download of one of the infected apps is complete, but waits at least an hour before starting its work. The goal of Clicker is to generate clicks on dozens of advertising content in order to maximize their audience and obtain funds through affiliation.
Clicker is notable for its propensity to infect originally legitimate applications, such as those listed above, but also to drain the battery of your smartphone. Indeed, Clicker operates in the background, which generates continuous activity on your mobile, thus reducing its autonomy to a trickle. If you have any doubts, this is also a good time to run an antivirus scan on your smartphone. For more details on how Clicker works, you can find them in the article published by McAfee at the source of this article.
Sources: McAfee , The Hacker News
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