TikTok, WeChat & Co: How does spyware get into smartphones?
TikTok, WeChat and thousands of other apps from China look harmless but are, in fact, malware, experts say. The apps cleverly disguise their origin. How can we protect ourselves from them?
Many apps seem innocuous and harmless to start with. At first, there is only a small back door that an attacker can use later. “Even if you look at the app now, and it is only doing harmless things, the Chinese manufacturer is often able to extend the functionality at runtime,” says founder and CEO of the IT security company CIROSEC. “All of a sudden, the app does completely different things without having been updated somewhere from the app store.”
