More Than 10,000,000 Users Downloaded a Fake App to Update Samsung Phones Before it Got Busted

If you personal a Samsung smartphone, probabilities are you will have felt a piece pissed off at some point about the every so often delayed Android updates for your telephone. As with most different Android phones too. And probabilities are that you probably could have gone looking the sector-wide web for some approach to manually download the paranormal updates. If you had been unlucky, you’ll have landed on your step of an app referred to as Updates For Samsung, to be had for free download at the Google Play Store.

The truth is that Samsung has not anything to do with this app. In reality, the app takes you to an advertisement laden website, which then prompts you to make a payment before it’ll download the promised updates. Everything about that is faux. This revelation comes from the Danish software security company CSIS Security Group.

In an reliable conversation, CSIS Security Group suggests that as many as 10,000,000 customers were tricked into downloading this app from the Google Play Store. A consumer can search for a specific firmware update for their smartphone in the “Download Firmware” phase inside the app. The app itself is complete of commercials and is making an attempt to distribute firmware and software for Samsung telephones without being affiliated to the organization in any way.

“A consumer can get an annual subscription for Samsung firmware update downloads for a small rate of $34.99. Interestingly, that doesn’t happen via the reputable Google Play subscriptions. The app truly asks in your credit card information and sends it to an API endpoint under updato[.]com over HTTPS,” says the report.

Incidentally, there is also a loose approach for purchasing those updates if you don’t want to pay, but those ‘free’ downloads from this advertisement infested app could be constrained to a paltry speed of 56 KBps.

At the instant, it isn’t always recognized if the Updates For Samsung app introduced any malware at the phones it was established in but truely brings with it a huge spyware repository despite the fact that. The app has been taken down from the Google Play Store.

If you’ve got it hooked up to your Samsung cellphone, it might be fine to uninstall it right away. It is continually secure to move to Settings -> About Phone -> Software Update to your Android telephone to check if there are any new Android updates ready to be downloaded officially—and no longer rely on shady 0.33-party apps besides.