Researchers find 75 apps on Google Play and 10 on Apple’s App Store that engaged in ad fraud, collectively had 13M installs, and have since been removed (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
McAfee researchers found 16 clicker apps with adware in Google Play with 20M+ downloads in total; Google removed the apps after McAfee reported them  —  Security researchers at McAfee have discovered a set of 16 malicious clicker apps that managed to sneak into Google Play, the official app store for Android.

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: BeReal has passed 53M installs, its MAUs are up 2,254% since January, and ~9% of its active installs on Android opened the app every day in Q3  —  Gen Z social media app BeReal encourages its users to take a photo every day — a format designed to create a daily habit.

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
UK police, Europol, Dutch police, and others dismantle online spoofing service iSpoof and arrest 146 people, including the suspected mastermind  —  The ‘iSpoof’ online spoofing service has been dismantled following an international law enforcement investigation that also led to the arrest of 146 people …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: Lensa tops the US App Store charts with 3.6M installs in December; app saw 12.6M global installs in Dec. so far, up 600% from last 11 days of Nov.  —  Lensa AI’s popularity has had a notable impact on the App Store’s Top Charts.  The popular photo and video editing app recently went viral …

Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer:
Google blocklisted two Chrome “SearchBlox” extensions with 200K+ installs, after discovery of a backdoor that can be used to steal Roblox credentials and assets  —  Chrome browser extension ‘SearchBlox’ installed by more than 200,000 users has been discovered to contain a backdoor …

CNBC:
The Southern District of New York charges SBF with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, money laundering, and more  —  – Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York unsealed eight seperate charges against disgraced FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried …