New DDoS malware lived in 300 Android apps on Google Play
The fight for internet security never ends on Android despite Google’s best efforts to keep everyone protected. The latest malware epidemic has been revealed as WireX.
WireX is a botnet that manifests as an Android app, and its sole purpose is to help direct traffic to specific websites in an attempt to take them down in what is essentially a DDoS attack.
If you don’t know what that is, it’s when a web server receives more traffic than it can handle, resulting in the website or server being unusable or downright unavailable. The GIF below shows one of the biggest botnet malwares in history, known as Mirai, in a visualization of internet traffic being distributed from one corner of the globe to another.
It’s said this is one of the first times the Android platform has been used for widespread infiltration, and its deployment is certainly among the biggest. Some 300 apps in Google Play were infected, which — as you may guess — have already been removed from both Google Play and the devices which they were installed on. Folks in over 100 countries downloaded these apps.
It’s yet another reminder that Android security is an ongoing concern that simply won’t go away overnight. It’s been an area that Google has increasingly emphasized over the years, with monthly security patches and their own behind-the-scenes screening processes. They can’t always catch everything, though, so we can only be grateful that they’re able to find and nip these things in the bud before they’re allowed to fester and become more than just nuisances.
via ArsTechnica