Anti-virus software vendor, Kaspersky Labs says that it recently discovered what it considers to be the most sophisticated virus for Android smartphones discovered to date.
The increased amount of effort being depolyed in developing Android smartphones could reflect the OS’s growing importance as a target thanks to its rising market share.
Kaspersky said that this virus turned out to be a multi-functional Trojan, capable of the following: sending SMS to premium-rate numbers; downloading other malware programs, installing them on the infected device and/or sending them further via Bluetooth; and remotely performing commands in the console.
Kaspersky Lab’s products detect this malicious program as Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a.
Malware writers typically try to make the codes in their creations as complicated as possible, to make life more difficult for anti-malware experts. However, the company said that it is rare to see concealment as advanced as Odad.a’s in mobile malware.
The creators had also exploited three backdoors into the Android OS, two of which were unknown before this virus was detected.
One of the new vulnerabilities make it impossible to delete the malicious program from the smartphone after it gains extended privileges.
Kaspersky confirmed that it has notified Google of the vulnerabilities.
The added that this latest virus actually looks closer to Windows malware than to other Android Trojans, in terms of its complexity and the number of unpublished vulnerabilities it exploits.
This means that the complexity of Android malware programs is growing rapidly alongside their numbers.
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