More than 500,000 Huawei smartphones have reportedly been infected with the Joker malware via appropriately manipulated apps from the manufacturer’s own app store, the AppGallery, under EMUI 8 to 11.
Joker malware is spyware that spies on messages, contacts, and other personal and sensitive data of smartphone owners. In addition, it can also book premium services without the user’s knowledge, thus creating unpleasant traps in the form of financial obligations. A total of ten applications were infected with this malware in Huawei AppGallery.
The malware Joker, which has been appearing again and again since 2017 and on April 7th, by the antivirus software manufacturer Dr. Web Anti-Virus was once again detected on Huawei smartphones.
According to Bleeping Computer, at least 538,000 smartphones from Huawei are said to have been infected with the malware via AppGallery.
The following apps were identified as culprits.
- Fun Color (com.funcolor.toucheffects)
- Superkeyboard (com.nova.superkeyboard)
- All-in-one messenger (com.messenger.sjdoifo)
- New 2021 Keyboard (com.newyear.onekeyboard)
- Camera MX – photo video camera (com.sdkfj.uhbnji.dsfeff)
- BeautyPlus camera (com.beautyplus.excetwa.camera)
- Color RollingIcon (com.hwcolor.jinbao.rollingicon)
- Funney Meme Emoji (com.meme.rouijhhkl)
- Happy Color (com.colour.syuhgbvcff)
- Happy Tapping (com.tap.tap.duedd)
These applications show more than 530,000 downloads on Huawei AppGallery. Huawei has already been informed of this fact and has removed the application from the store.
If you have one of these applications installed on your phone, you should remove it as soon as possible.
The Joker malware is not only an issue on smartphones with Huawei’s EMUI operating system. In October 2019, Kaspersky discovered over 70 apps compromised with the Joker malware that made it into Google Play. In January 2020, Google itself announced that between 2017 and 2020, the company had removed a total of more than 1,700 Joker apps from the Play Store before they could be downloaded by users.
