Android Banking Malware ‘Xenomorph’ May Have Impacted Thousands

[anon(40376)]

Ran across this article while killing time waiting to call FedEx and then UPS. Doesn't affect me, but could affect others....
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2022/02/android-banking-malware-xenomorph-may-have-impacted-thousands.html

 

[hallux]

This, friends, is an anecdotal reason why I never gave in to these kinds of apps. I never felt the need for them, and felt that they caused more headache than the help they claimed to provide. Now it seems they can also be HARMFUL.

 

[J Dubbs]

This, and the steady reports of many, many other malicious apps being constantly reported for years now, is the reason I don't install third party apps anymore. Besides they don't offer me anything I need

 

[B. Diddy]

But keep in mind that in order for users to be affected, they needed to install some dodgy piece-of-malicious-junk "Fast Cleaner" app, which carried the malware. If you follow relatively common sense guidelines about the apps installed from the Play Store, I think banking apps (at least from major institutions) remain reliable and secure.

[GUIDE] How To Avoid Malware - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

It's also worth noting that the article said that 50,000 devices have been affected. There are over 3 billion Android devices in use, so the percentage of devices affected is 0.0017%. It obviously still sucks for the unfortunate souls who were duped into installing that app, but like in so many of these kinds of articles, the real world risk is extremely low.