Many Huawei smartphone users were unpleasantly surprised to learn that a trojan was hidden in 190 apps in the AppGallery.
Huawei has its own app store, AppGallery, and it appears to have housed a trojan in 190 of its games, which implies a desire to trap a rather young audience. In total, these games have reportedly been downloaded over 9 million times. To play it, users were forced to cede certain permissions to the app, including access to calling features.
Concretely, Doctor Web has analyzed this trojan as being able to recover users’ personal data, such as network settings or location, and to access their contacts. Experts immediately alerted Huawei, which took action and removed the games in question. We know the names of five of them: Команда должна убить боеголовку, Cat game room, Drive school simulator and 快点 躲 起来. The complete list can be found on GitHub.
On the other hand, even if these applications are no longer downloadable at present, there is no guarantee that the malware will disappear from infected smartphones.
Already last April, the AppGallery was hit by a trojan but it also seized the bank details of the victims, which is not the case this time.
Huawei reacted to the case by saying: “The security system integrated into the AppGallery made it possible to quickly detect a potential risk within certain applications. We are actively working with affected developers to resolve this issue. As soon as we determine that these apps are completely safe, they will be listed again on the AppGallery so that users can download their favorite apps.
Huawei’s priority is and will remain the protection of its security network and the confidentiality of its users’ data. We take into account all comments from third parties to ensure that we meet our commitments. We will continue to work closely with our partners and use the most advanced and innovative technologies to protect the privacy of our users.“
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