Squid game, the latest dystopian fantasy show on Netflix has been the talk of the town since the past few weeks. So much so that it has inspired smartphone apps, wallpapers, Halloween costumes, and much more. One thing that probably the makers didn’t want – Squid Game has also inspired many cybercriminals. According to a recent find by an ESET researcher, an app for Squid Game wallpapers on the Google Play Store was installing the Joker malware on many Android phones.

According to Lukas Stefanko, the ESET researcher who flagged the issue to Google, the app was installing the malware on Android smartphones. It was downloaded at least 5,000 times before Google took down the “Squid Game Wallpaper 4K HD” app from its app market. Anyone downloading the app was falling to a costly SMS trap, where the app could also download and execute native libraries and APK payloads, in order to take control of the affected smartphones. Stefano said that there are more than 200 apps based on Squid Game on the Google Play Store.