Joker malware on android phones on the loose.

On a day to day basis, we use our phones. Some of us have iPhones, and some of us have Android phones. If you happen to have an Android phone, you might want to check if you have been infected by the new Joker malware.

This new batch of Android malware might have infected your phone. It is to no surprise to us that hundreds of Android apps are in the Google Play Store and some of them have racked up to hundreds of thousands of downloads. Some of the malicious developers have embedded sneaky malware code into the apps that they made.

This time, the said malware has been dubbed as “Joker”. Aleksejs Kuprin of CSIS, which is a cyber security company writes that this particular malware is designed to silently sign users up for subscription services. Unsuspecting users might not even notice hit them unless they constandly check their monthly credit card statements.

As per Alksejs Kuprin – “For example, in Denmark, Joker can silently sign the victim up for a 50 DKK/week service (roughly ~6,71 EUR). This strategy works by automating the necessary interaction with the premium offer’s webpage, entering the operator’s offer code, then waiting for a SMS message with a confirmation code and extracting it using regular expressions. Finally, the Joker submits the extracted code to the offer’s webpage, in order to authorize the premium subscription.”

Google has been constantly removing offending apps from the Google Play Store. While the bunch of apps with the Joker malware has been downloadd 472,000 times before they were

It is time to check your Android phones if you have downloaded one of the following apps:

Advocate Wallpaper
Age Face
Altar Message
Antivirus Security - Security Scan
Beach Camera
Board picture editing
Certain Wallpaper
Climate SMS
Collate Face Scanner
Cute Camera
Dazzle Wallpaper
Declare Message
Display Camera
Great VPN
Humour Camera
Ignite Clean
Leaf Face Scanner
Mini Camera
Print Plant scan
Rapid Face Scanner
Reward Clean
Ruddy SMS
Soby Camera 
Spark Wallpaper

If you have one of the above-mentioned – delete them ASAP. Check your Google Play account for any unexpected subscriptions. Take a good look at your credit card and bank statements as well as far as June 2019. This is when the Joker malware started to run its campaign of auto-subscriptions. If you happened to download one of the apps, let your contacts know that you are potentially infected and as a precaution, let them know that the malware siphons a copy of your entire contact list and uploads it to the malware developers’ servers.