These 5 popular apps are infected with a Trojan, you should remove them as soon as possible

These apps have already been downloaded more than 150,000 times by Android smartphones.

Although our smartphones are becoming increasingly sophisticated, they are not immune to problems. Aside from their obsolescence and potential bugs, our phones are ideal targets for cyber hacking. Indeed, a smartphone today contains a wealth of valuable information for both us and hackers. Every day, hackers are looking for new ways to infect your smartphone and harvest your data.

Their latest attempt to date appears to be wreaking havoc among Android phone owners. Spotted by experts at BleepingComputer , this new hacking technique appears to have successfully infected many users' devices by injecting a Trojan horse into popular apps.

According to experts at BleepingComputer, these infected apps have already been downloaded more than 150,000 times since their appearance on online download stores. The site even estimates that the figure appears to be approaching 200,000 downloads at the time of writing. Although Google has already taken action by removing these apps from the Google Play Store, they are still accessible online via their .APK files.

The five apps in question are file converters that seem harmless on the surface. Don't be fooled, though: if you don't notice any hacking attempts on your phone, these apps are indeed infected with a Trojan horse that will endeavor to suck up your personal data. The apps in question are: Phone Cleaner - File Explorer, PDF Viewer - File Explorer, PDF Reader - Viewer & Editor, Phone Cleaner: File Explorer, PDF Reader: File Manager.

What should you do if you have one of these apps on your phone? Your first instinct should be to put your phone in airplane mode to cut off all internet connection. Delete the affected apps from your device as soon as possible. Next, we recommend running an anti-malware and virus scanner like Avast, Norton, or MalwareBytes to detect any potential issues that may still be present on your device.

If in doubt, we also recommend changing the passwords for any accounts you had on your smartphone and reviewing your recent banking transactions to ensure hackers haven't retrieved your credentials. As a last resort, you can completely reset your phone or contact a smartphone repairer to completely restore it to its factory settings and check if the Trojan is still present.