Android Photographers Shutter with News of Malicious Prisma Apps

Photographers and editors on Android devices, beware! The wildly popular Prisma app, which transforms your photos into artwork, is a recent target of the cybercrime world. Researchers at security company ESET have discovered several fake versions of the app that can infect users with malware.

The app has been out only a very short time, but the popularity has made it attractive for those wanting to spread either malware or annoying adware and possibly both. In some of the cases, the infected apps tricked users into visiting sites where surveys were displayed that ultimately stole the entered personal information. Subsequently, those unfortunate victims were “signed up” for various bogus and pricey SMS services. One of them displayed fake messages on the screen saying the phone was infected with a virus that could be removed if he downloaded another anti-virus app, which was also malicious.

This stresses the importance of doing the background research on all apps that you download to your mobile devices; and any software to your computer. Read the reviews both inside the app store and elsewhere online. Don’t get the apps from any location other than the official app store for your particular devices.  Sideloading, which is getting them from location other than the app stores, is more riskier because generally those in the app stores go through more stringent security checks before they are allowed to be placed into them. Unfortunately, no process is 100% guaranteed, so they sometimes will slip through, which is what happened in this case.

Another version of the app found by ESET displayed fake Android 6.0 update messages, which then redirected users to a site that stole Gmail credentials. Those were subsequently used in a phishing scam.

Google has removed all of the known malicious apps from the Google Play store, but look out for this to happen again with the next popular app craze. Not long ago it was Pokémon Go and it’s likely even more malicious versions of that and its support apps will pop up. So, always make sure the apps you want are from the legitimate developers. While you’re in there searching for Prisma, make sure you download a good anti-malware app too, if you haven’t already. Then update it. While it won’t guarantee malware won’t end up on your devices, it is certainly a first line of defense.

For those who have Apple devices, you’re not completely safe from malicious apps either. Toward the end of last year, Apple removed over 300 malicious apps from its official store.

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