14 DAY TRIAL // Pieces of malware designed to infect Android devices are highly common these days. In many cases, cybercriminals spread their creations by disguising them as popular applications.
A perfect example for this is a Chinese car driving game found by Avast experts to be bundled with a dangerous piece of malware.
When downloaded from app markets, the malicious version of the game appears to be harmless. However, when executed, a small downloader steps into play in the background, retrieving another installer called @GameToolz.
When installed, @GameToolz requests permission to access SMSs, storage, network communications, phone calls and hardware controls. However, even if the user notices that this is suspicious and decides not to proceed, the app is installed automatically.
Once it finds itself on a phone, the malware starts collecting information about the device. While this doesn’t sound too dangerous, in reality, the application running in the background allows the attacker to take complete control of the device and use it for all sorts of malicious tasks, including to send SMSs to premium rate numbers.