More than 35,000 smartphones in Vietnam infected with virus that steals Facebook passwords

According to statistics from Bkav, more than 35,000 smartphones in Vietnam are infected with the Ghost. Team virus that steals Facebook passwords. This malware exploits a series of popular Vietnamese applications on Google Play to spread. Bkav experts recommend that users should scan for viruses and immediately change their Facebook account passwords if they discover their phones are infected.

The virus will take control of the phone and steal the user's Facebook account password.

To trick victims, the “clean” app will display security warnings such as the phone is infected with malware or the phone is slow… with instructions on how to handle it. These are actually fake warnings, following which the phone will be infected with a virus. The virus will take control of the phone and steal the user’s Facebook account password.

The hackers' attack method is quite sophisticated. First, the hackers put "clean" and popular applications such as the perpetual calendar, flashlight, compass... on Google Play for users to install. This application will automatically download another malicious application.

How GostTeam is infected.

“Hackers using a clean app on Google Play as a malware infection tool will make it very difficult for users to guard against it. In this case, the only way to protect yourself is to use antivirus software automatically,” said Mr. Vu Ngoc Son, Vice President of Anti Malware at Bkav.

Google Play has now removed these Vietnamese applications, so the number of devices infected with the GhostTeam virus is no longer increasing sharply. However, phones that have previously installed malicious applications are still at risk of losing their Facebook passwords.