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Hackers can steal 2FA codes and private messages from Android phones
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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Let me stop you right there... and leave.
Normally I would agree with this perspective, but in this case the "malicious app" is just a demo. It requires no permissions to do the malicious behavior, which means that the relevant code could be included in any app and wouldn't trigger a user approval, a permissions request or a security alert. This could be hiding in anything that you install.
So it could be hiding in, what would you call them…….malicious apps?
The relevant code isn’t going to be in a non malicious app.
Um, ok, and how would you know the difference?
Because if it’s doing this it’s a malicious app….
Google also said they’ve found zero apps doing this.
OK, how would you know?
So what? There are millions of apps on the Play store, they aren't all being reviewed with this level of scrutiny. This means basically nothing.
Having cleaned a bunch of old folks phones in the past years this is far more common than we ”advanced” users think. It often starts with clicking an advert or some spam mail or message from (infected) friend, which to them, looks absolutely legit. Then the installed app spams the user with notifications to install more ”PDF readers”, ”phone cleanup apps” and whatnot. In best case these just flood the user with ads but just as easily can do more malicious stuff.
After some schooling (”never click anything that is offered to you” etc.) and putting up defencew like AdGuard (system level) the instances of ”my phone is slow”, ”what does this message mean” etc. have radically decreased. Apple devices have their own issues but this kind of troubles are next to non-existent there.