Researchers at Check Point Threat Prevention have discovered a malicious application that is said to have affected more than a million users, and which has already been released twice on the Google Play Store. The malware was hidden inside an Android game called “Brain Test.”
According to the researchers, the malware was reported on Google Play twice. In each case, the downloads ranged between 100,000 and 500,000 according to Google Play statistics. Check Point reported the incident to Google on September 10, 2015, and the app containing the malware was removed from Google Play on September 15, 2015.
“The malware was first detected on a Nexus 5 smartphone, and although the user attempted to remove the affected app, the malware reappeared on the same device shortly after. Our analysis of the malware shows that it uses multiple, advanced techniques to evade Google Play malware detection and thus maintain its presence on targeted devices,” the analysts in a blog post.
Although they reported the malware to Google, and the company took steps to remove the app from the Google Play Store, it managed to evade malware detection with the help of advanced techniques. It also installs a similar application to itself in order to monitor each other so that if you delete the first one, the second one will remain on your device.
Researchers suggest that to protect yourself from malware, you should have up-to-date anti-malware software on your mobile device. If it has already affected your device, you should re-flash it with an official ROM.
