There’s no indication that any of the apps were available through Google Play.

So it’s just users installing untrusted apps to their phone?

scour infected phones for text messages, contacts, and all stored images

They also can’t do that without the user explicitly giving the app permission to do those things, unless they found an exploit or something, but the article doesn’t say that.

Also, why would you have images with passwords in them on your phone anyway?

People really should know better nowadays than to do any of this shit. Every step here is preventable by the user just thinking about what they’re really doing.