It appears that the malware threat on the Android platform is becoming more dominate as apparently the word is the biggest ever Android malware campaign might have possible infected a staggering 5 million devices with victims downloading affected apps right from the Android Market.
According to an article over on Gmanetwork by way of PC World, Symantec says the malware is called “Android Countercrank” was packaged in 13 applications from 3 publishers with app titles ranging from “Counter Strike Ground Force,” to “Sexy Girls Puzzles.”
Apparently as of Friday many of the infected apps were still available to download from the Android Market and Symantec estimated that 5 million impact by combining the download totals of the 13 apps and coming to the figure of 1 million on the low end and 5 million on the high end.
Apparently “Android Countercrank” is a Trojan that once installed collects a varying range of info including the handset maker, copies of bookmarks, and modifies the browser home page and the hackers have monetized the malware by pushing adverts to compromised smartphones.
A director with Symantec’s security response team, Kevin Haley says that the publishers do not appear to be real publishers and that the apps are not rebundled applications like they have seen previously.
“Android Countercrank” is said to be a minor variation on an older Android Trojan known as Android.Tonclank, which was discovered back in June of last year. Apparently according to Symantec’s findings some of the 13 affected app have been available to download from the Android Market for at least a month and are all free apps, although Symantec only recently discovered them.
Apparently Symantec have informed Google of the 13 infected apps however word is the Google guys didn’t reply immediately to questions; however Symantec have published a list of the 13 affected apps to their website.
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