Scammers love to sell “Flash Player” for Android to careless users who are easily deceived. Although a series of these scam apps were deleted from the official Android app store after our recent report, malicious apps such as Android/Fladstep have reappeared in the store. This time scammers are promoting their sales tools using the RSS feeds from the world’s most popular movie distribution site, YouTube, to impersonate legitimate apps.
After being launched, the malicious app shows a playlist of video movies with titles related to Flash Player for Android devices.
This playlist of movies is actually retrieved from YouTube, from its published RSS feeds. We can bet that these movies do not belong to the attacker.
The playlist appears to start with advice about Flash Player. However, the scammer first replaces all the movie links with links to fraudulent sales websites, which require visitors to pay money for the fake Flash Player. (Adobe’s version is free.) We have seen these websites before.
If a user selects “Yes” on the download site, a familiar, suspicious page appears. Finally the user is redirected to a PayPal page. Unlike the previously reported case in which the scammer offered the free Flash Player for €5, this time the scammer has doubled the price, to €10.
Of course, you don’t need to pay for this bogus free version of Flash Player for Android; you should directly download and install it from Adobe. If it appears you have been tricked into buying a maliciously crafted version of Flash Player, you can simply close the app or browser if you see the preceding screen.
The post Scammers Sell Free Mobile Flash Player Using YouTube Feeds appeared first on McAfee.