6 Antivirus Apps From Play Store Steal Your Money, Remove Them

There are six antivirus apps discovered in the Google Play Store that actually contain a serious form of malware. It is a so-called Trojan horse, a new form of that virus called ‘Sharkbot’ that attacks banking apps.

SharkBot malware

Six apps have been discovered in the Play Store that pose a very serious threat to your phone. Security researchers from NCC Group were the first to track down one of the apps. Thus, according to Bleeping Computer established that the apps pretended to be anti-virus software, but that they are actually hidden malware.

Such malware is often referred to as a “Trojan Horse” and is most common in free apps. ‘Sharkbot’, as this particular virus is called, was only discovered in October 2021 and is attacking your banking apps. The malware can bypass your authentication even if you use two-step verification, and then transfer funds from your accounts. Sharkbot also steals your bank details.

What can you do?

Thousands of people have fallen victim to these six malware apps. Google has since removed the apps permanently, but if they’re still on your phone, they can still cause damage. These are the names of the apps and the last two have the same name:

• Atom Clean Booster, Antivirus
• Antivirus, Super Cleaner
• Alpha Antivirus, Cleaner
• Powerful Cleaner, Antivirus
• Center Security – Antivirus
• Center Security – Antivirus

Once you find any of these apps on your phone, uninstall them immediately. Then you check the transaction history of your bank accounts. In addition, it is strongly recommended to delete the login details of your banking apps.

Abuse of notifications

All so-called antivirus apps abused push notifications in banking apps to break into an account. A technique that is unusual, but will also be less effective for malware with the arrival of Android 13. It was also revealed late last week that 11 very popular apps have secretly collected data from users. This was not malware, but a violation of privacy. Were you a victim of this app and do you use an antivirus app on your phone at all? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of this article.