If there is one thing modern human beings don’t like, and therefore want to distance themselves from, it’s staying put on one spot. Being stationary has become probably the biggest signal of mediocrity. Hence, to avoid being stationary and mediocre, we have dedicated ourselves to the concept of continuous innovation. A shared belief amongst the millennials is that there is always a better version of something waiting to be envisioned and unleashed. The by-products of this willingness to strive for improvement can be observed within the most basic of things. For instance, while having a normal cell phone used to be a big deal when it first came out, there was someone who believed we can make it better, and that’s what gave way to the introduction of smartphones.
Just like that, when internet became a thing, there were people who imagined it playing a pivotal role in our lives by becoming the primary facilitator for activities ranging across a wide spectrum. This put the foundation for a cyberspace that we know today. The utility of cyberspace has gone up so drastically that we are now more or less necessitated to engage with it for at least something during our routine. This creates a double-edged sword, as reliance of this degree brings a proportionate amount of vulnerability with it. By entrusting the cyberspace for every little thing, we have put all our eggs in one basket, a basket that can sometimes get eerily dangerous. This was proved once again when the reports of The Joker malware resurfacing emerged.
The Joker, a mobile Trojan, made its first appearance in 2017, when the news about a malware intercepting user’s messages and getting them subscribed to unwanted paid services came up. After getting shunned off by Google Play security reinforcements at that time, the billing-fraud malware has made a comeback. With better equipped to evade security walls, The Joker is once again targeting household android apps. If the reported numbers are accurate, researchers have already spotted over 1,000 samples of the malware in this latest spree of attacks. The Joker’s ability to sit dormant within legitimate apps like camera, messengers, games, and photo editors etc adds a different level of potential devastation to the picture. Since 2017, the Trojan malware has forced Google Play to take down over 1,800 infected apps.