author: Bart Swiatek
Highly-popular Android App Contained Dangerous Virus
CamScanner - Phone PDF Creator app has been containing a dangerous virus that installs other harmful files on your phone. The effects of atheTrojan can be very serious. The program has already been removed from Google Play Store, but in the past, it was very popular - it was downloaded over 100 million times.
Experts from Kaspersky Lab found that a popular Android app called CamScanner - Phone PDF Creator (also known as CamScanner-Scanner to scan PDFs) contained harmful software Trojan-Dropper.AndroidOS.Necro.n. The virus can install other dangerous files on the infected device, allowing, among other things, to display forceful advertisements, which after clicking them, secretly subscribe to a paid service.
CamScanner is an application that allows you to scan documents to PDF files. The program has a number of useful features, such as OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and is very popular with over 100 million users. It is worth noting that CamScanner was perfectly safe for a long time - the virus appeared only in one of the last updates (it was hidden in the advertising library module). The Trojan is said to have been removed in the latest version of the software, but Google has still removed the application from its store.
This situation should be a warning to all users of smartphones running Android. Think three times before you install an app on your phone that you don't know much about, even if it comes from Google Play (Google, of course, cares about the security of the shop, but can't catch everything). It is always a good idea to check the latest reviews because users often warn them about potential problems (this was the case here as well). It is also worth making sure that your phone is protected by a good antivirus program.