Apple and Google have attracted as many 20 apps from their respective app stores as security researchers found that apps were holding data theft for nearly a year.
Kaspersky security researchers said, which they say were cumulatively downloaded more than 242,000 times through Google Game Store.
Using the code that is created to capture the visible text on the user screen – known as the recognition of optical character (OCR) – researchers found Malware scanned image galleries on victims’ equipment for keywords to find Recovery phrases for wallets of cryptocurrency across different languages, including English, including English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Using Malware to capture a victim’s recovery phrases, the attackers can gain full control over the portfolio of a victim and steal their funds, researchers found.
Malware can also enable personal information from photos, such as messages and passwords, the researchers said.
After receiving the report from the researchers, Apple withdrew compromised apps from the app store last week, followed by Google.
“All identified apps have been removed from Google Play, and developers have been banned,” Google spokesman Ed Fernandez told Techcrunch.
Google’s spokesman also confirmed that Android users were protected from popular versions of this malware through the built -in Google Play Protect Security function.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Kaspersky’s spokesman Rosemarie Gonzales told Techcrunch that while reported applications were withdrawn from official applications, company telemetry data suggested that Malware was also available from other websites and unofficial app stores.
