According to the report from the Doctor Web analysts, over 9 million Android smartphones have long been infected with a dangerous Trojan originating from apps distributed through Huawei AppGallery. The name is identified as “Android.Cynos.7.origin”.
The main functionality of the version of the module discovered by malware analysts is the collection of information about users and their devices and the display of advertisements.
190 games on the AppGallery are infected with the trojan:
Among the infected applications are around 190 games on the Huawei AppGallery, some of which target Russian users, while others target Chinese or international audiences.
The identified titles are the team must kill the warhead (translated from Russian), Cat game room , Drive school simulator and Hurry up and hide (translated from Chinese).
Apps with this trojan ask users to give certain permissions which when granted help the malware collect and send user data to a remote service, including phone number, device location based on GPS coordinates or mobile network and Wi-Fi access point data when the application has permission to access the location, various parameters of the mobile network, various technical specifications of the device and various parameters from the trojan app metadata.
Doctor Web has informed Huawei about these discoveries and with the publication of this report the manufacturer has taken steps to remove all infected apps from AppGallery, inviting users to uninstall them if they were installed on devices.
