Whats-App: A new virus infects the messenger

Computer security experts are warning against a new virus that attacks WhatsApp and other popular applications. Already 25 million devices would be infected with the "Agent Smith" virus.

The English website checkpoint.com points to the new "Agent Smith" virus that infects Android devices and popular apps such as WhatsApp. To date, 25 million devices have been infected worldwide, mainly in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But devices in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States have already been infected with the virus. German Android users seem so far safe from the virus.

The Agent Smith virus disguises itself as a regular application that you can download from third-party app stores, such as "9 apps". These are for example. for free games. If the virus is on your smartphone, it scans your device for popular apps, such as WhatsApp. If "Agent Smith" finds one of these applications, he will target them.

In the second step, "Agent Smith" replaces the corresponding applications with a copy. For the virus to exploit several vulnerabilities in the Android system and users do not understand that their smartphone is infected. The malicious application copy will then spam users with fraudulent ads.

So that you can protect yourself

Download apps only from trusted sources, such as Google Play Store or App Store, and not third-party apps such as 9Apps.

If you have malware or a virus on your phone, you can do the following:

Android:

Go to your settings and select the "Applications" item. Then scroll down to the suspicious or malicious application and uninstall it. If you do not know which application contains the virus, for security reasons, remove all recently installed applications from your smartphone, especially if you have downloaded them from a third party.

iPhone:

Access your settings, scroll to Safari and choose the "Block pop-ups" setting. Go to "Advanced Settings", click on "Website Data" and delete the unknown websites.

For security reasons, run an antivirus scan on your smartphone. Our technique recommends, for example the free application AVG Antivirus 2019.

AVG virus on Google Play

_{(Source: Checkpoint: "Agent Smith": the new virus to hit mobile devices)}