{"id":98448,"date":"2016-07-13T10:25:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T08:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=98448"},"modified":"2016-07-14T07:56:46","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T05:56:46","slug":"south-african-smartphone-owners-beware-pokemon-go-downloads-could-be-infected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/nintendo\/98448-south-african-smartphone-owners-beware-pokemon-go-downloads-could-be-infected","title":{"rendered":"South African smartphone owners beware – Pokemon GO downloads could be infected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update:<\/strong> For\u00a0details on how to install Pokemon Go, see\u00a0How you can download Pokemon Go in South Africa<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If you have downloaded Pokemon GO from an untrusted third-party source, you may have just infected your smartphone with malware.<\/p>\n

This follows a report by security company Proofpoint<\/a><\/strong> which discovered a malicious remote access tool side-loaded onto the Pokemon GO app, just 72 hours after the game’s official Australian release.<\/p>\n

Many gamers wishing to access the game before it was released in their region resorted to downloading the APK from third parties.<\/p>\n

Additionally, many large media outlets provided instructions on how to download the game from a third party [4,5,6]. Some even went further and described how to install the APK downloaded from a third party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Luckily, there is a relatively simple\u00a0step to check if your phone is infected with malware:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. First, they may check the SHA256 hash of the downloaded APK. The legitimate application that has been often linked to by media outlets has a hash of 8bf2b0865bef06906cd854492dece202482c04ce9c5e881e02d2b6235661ab67, although it is possible that there are updated versions already released. The malicious APK that we analyzed has a SHA256 hash of 15db22fd7d961f4d4bd96052024d353b3ff4bd135835d2644d94d74c925af3c4.<\/li>\n
  2. Another simple method to check if a device is infected would be to check the installed application\u2019s permissions, which can typically be accessed by first going to Settings -> Apps -> Pokemon GO and then scrolling down to the PERMISSIONS<\/em> section. If any of the granted permissions seem suspicious to you, delete the app immediately.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Pokemon GO is only officially availabl in North America<\/strong>, Australia<\/strong> and New Zealand,<\/strong> with other territories expected to receive support in the near future.<\/p>\n

    Are you currently playing Pokemon GO? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments below and in our forums.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    More gaming news<\/h3>\n

    How to get FTTH to come to your neighbourhood<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    The best multiplayer PC games of 2016 (so far)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    AMD Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 official specifications revealed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Find out whether your Pokemon GO app is actually malware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":98450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8585,2226,6],"tags":[947,20248,109,20246,531,777],"class_list":["post-98448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadgets","category-mobile","category-nintendo","tag-android","tag-apk","tag-download","tag-go","tag-ios","tag-pokemon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98448"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98568,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98448\/revisions\/98568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}