By 
With Android being the open platform that it is, that leaves the door open for malicious individuals and companies attempting to take control of our devices while making money for themselves. The latest malware to be making its way through our devices is named HummingBad and is run be a company in China called Yingmob.
Discovered by a security company named Check Point, a full research report has been published on ‘HummingBad’ and the company behind it. First discovered in February of this year, the malware has infected over 85 million users across the globe, with the majority of affected users being found in China and India. That hasn’t stopped Yingmob from attempting to take over devices in the US with over 25 million devices being affected.
What ‘HummingBad’ accomplishes is that it “establishes a persistent rootkit on Android devices, generates fraudulent ad revenue, and installs additional fraudulent apps.” By being able to do this to so many devices, the company behind the malware is generating an average of $300,000 a month in revenue while installing fraudulent applications on users devices.
Yingmob is an interesting company due to the fact that it runs side by side with an official advertising analytics company and is comprised of approximately 25 employees, making it quite a bit more organized than other malware attacks that we’ve seen in the past. With so many employees, this opens the doors to see more versions of Android compromised and affected. According to the report by Check Point, ‘HummingBad’ has affected all versions of Android from Ice Cream Sandwich, up to Android Marshmallow.
There has been no fix for the ‘HummingBad’ malware as of yet, so the only way that we can suggest to keep yourself protected is by not installing apps from non-trusted third-party sources.
[via Check Point]
Comments