A new malware, which has so far affected about 25 million devices, most of them in India, called Agent Smith , infects the Android operating system of devices and replaces applications with a malicious version of them.
Here's how to detect malware on your device and remove it.
Removing infected apps from Google Play
The main source of infection was the 9Apps app store. However, the Google Play Store appears to have been affected by the malware. Check Point discovered 11 apps that contained a “malicious but dormant” set of files, which were related to Agent Smith. The versions of Agent Smith discovered on the Google Play Store used a slightly different propagation technique, but had the same end goal. After Check Point reported it to Google, all of these apps were removed from the Google Play Store.
How to detect and remove Agent Smith?
Detecting Agent Smith on your device is not difficult. If you notice that the applications you usually use suddenly start showing a large amount of ads when they didn't before, it's a sign that something is wrong. Also, if you have difficulty or can't even exit an ad, it's another sign of malware. However, since malware is quite discreet in its movements, it's very difficult to detect the subtle changes it makes to an application.
Of course, the sudden appearance of a large volume of ads in an application is not necessarily a sign of this particular malware, as there are other malicious software that use similar techniques. It is possible that your device is infected with something else.
If you suspect that something is wrong with your device, it is a good idea to run an antimalware or antivirus scan to detect if there is any malware.
For this purpose, you can use Malwarebytes Security, the Android version of the excellent tool . Download Malwarebytes Security and run a full system scan. This should detect and remove the malicious apps.
