Trojan masquerades as Google Play app; cannot be removed.
Researchers at German security firm
G Data
have
discovered
Android
smartphones that come shipped with spyware.
The phone is the
N9500
from Chinese manufacturer
Star
, which appears to be very similar to the popular
Samsung S5
, but with a much lower price tag. Following reports from customers,
G Data
researchers decided to purchase the phone and confirmed that it contained the trojan known as Android.Trojan.Uupay.D.
This trojan masquerades as the legitimate
Google Play
app, making its activities invisible to the phone’s user. To make matters worse, as it is part of the firmware, the app cannot be removed from the device. Intercepted data is sent to a server located in China, while the malware also prevents the installation of security updates.
Of course, there is only one sensible piece of advice regarding this phone, which is to avoid it completely. Thankfully, most web stores appear to have stopped selling it.
Another security firm,
FireEye
, also reported a piece of
Android
malware that masquerades as the
Google Play
app. An analysis on the company’s
blog
explains how this malware avoids detection by storing the payload as an encrypted attachment to a seemingly benign application.
This malware also steals data and sends it off to a Chinese server. However, it is unclear whether the two threats are related.
Update:
G Data
‘s Eddy Willems
says
he believes they are not related.
Posted on 19 June 2014 by
Martijn Grooten
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