Squid Game App is Taken Down from Google Play Store

Squid Game is all the rage these days, with the Korean show having quickly become Netflix’s biggest launch to date. The hype is taken advantage of by online threat actors who are spreading malware onto target computers by luring victims by the name of the Netflix series.

The malicious activity has been spotted on the Google Play Store, hidden in an app that masquerades as a wallpaper store named after the show. The Squid Game app, one among many of its kind, is filled with malware. The app has already been downloaded by over 5,000 users from the Play Store.

The malicious app named Squid Game Wallpaper by XEXO studios was first discovered by Twitter user @ReBensk, who shared the finding in a tweet marking several cybersecurity experts. Soon after, Lukas Stefanko, a malware researcher at ESET shared an update on the app, confirming it to be ridden by the known malware Joker.

Stefanko explained that the app was able to download and execute native libraries on the target device, which contain codes that a developer wrote for specific computer architecture. These native libraries then download and execute the APC payload on the target device.