A report by IT security firm ESET, said:
"Cybercriminals have been using popular mobile gaming apps including
versions of Plants vs Zombies, Candy Crush and Super Hero Adventure to deliver
a backdoor Trojan directly onto victim’s devices via the official Google Play
store. ESET detects the mobile gaming apps that install the Trojan as Android/TrojanDropper.Mapin
and the Trojan itself as Android/Mapin. This malware is capable of taking
control of a victim’s device and making it part of a botnet under an attacker’s
control." It can then push notifications, display ads and launch apps. "Android
users in India are currently the most affected, with 73.58 per cent of these
detections observed", said security site WeLiveSecurity.
The virus
requests device administrator rights and is capable of pushing various
notifications, downloading, installing and launching applications, and
obtaining the user’s private information, but its main purpose appears to be to
display full-screen advertisements on the infected device.
"Android users in
India are currently the most affected, with 73.58 per
cent of these detections observed", said security site WeLiveSecurity.
The virus requests
device administrator rights and is capable of pushing various notifications,
downloading, installing and launching applications, and obtaining the user’s
private information, but its main purpose appears to be to display full-screen
advertisements on the infected device, ESET said in a report.
The virus pretends to
be a Google Play Update or an app named Manage Settings and takes 2-3 days to
get activated after being downloaded, which prevents detection from Google’s
Bouncer malware prevention system, according to ESET.
Although the number of
users having solid anti-malware apps installed on their smartphones and tablets
is growing in India, the number of malware created for smartphones is growing
at a much faster pace. All these infected games are still available for
download from Android market places other than Google Play and have been
downloaded thousands of times
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