The series continues by gaining followers. “Squid Game” is Netflix’s best box this fall of 2021. Often, the success of such a cultural product leads to a bunch of derivative products, especially on the net. So while no official mobile application has yet been submitted for the South Korean series, many have been created, some containing malware, report Forbes, Around mid-October. One of them is particularly similar to a scam. Google realized its vulnerability and downloaded it at least 5,000 times before removing it from the Play Store.

ESET Android security expert Lukas Stefanko has learned that this “Squid Game” wallpaper app is actually Joker malware, which registers its victims for premium subscription services, which can steal SMS messages, contact lists or information on the device on which it is installed. This malware is well known from the Google Play Store: it has already been found several times in different forms. For this new “squid game” variant, anyone who downloads this malicious application will find that they have been the victim of ad fraud or registered for paid SMS services.

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This is not the first time such malicious applications have surfaced while surfing a movie, series or video game. Pokemon and Fortnight have allowed such scams to occur in the past, Forbes recalls. Google has detection processes in place, but some apps fall through the cracks.

Faced with the success of the “Squid game”, some cybersecurity experts, including Lucas Stefanco, generally advise against downloading unofficial applications. Since the release of the series, he himself has already estimated at least 200.