Caution: Super Mario Bros and GTA Malwares Detected at Google Play. Be Careful Guys!!

July 12, 2012 John Reyvaldi Android News

This is a warning for those of you who always easily attracted to cracked or modded games (including me!). Symantec is recently spotted two new malwares appear at Google Play store, the web page that claimed to be the safest place to download Android apps. The security company explained that the malware is currently named as Android.Dropdialer and described as “a trojan horse for Android device that send SMS messages to premium-rate phone number”. They come in a form of a wallpaper but then silently send a hefty priced text messages to an International number. What makes me interesting is that the malwares are disguised as two apps that took their name from popular game series “Super Mario Bros” and “GTA: Moscow City”.

I’m sure that there’s lot of Mario and GTA fans that now get confused because their phone credit disapper mysteriously. According to Play Store statistics, both of those malwares has been downloaded between 50,000 and 100,000 times! I can’t believe how fast malicous software like these can spread around the globe. But the worst part is Google was not doing anything about that until Symantec publish their report! At least you can show us some responsibilty Google and where the heck is the Bouncer service that you were talkin about? Was it vulnerable against such attack like this?

Just to make things become uncertain, another security company called as F-Secure said that Google doesn’t do the cleaning process completely. They manage to find another similar malwares with names like GTA 3: Las Vegas, Instagram After Effect, FIFA 11 Russian Edition, and Odnoklassniki Life. So, i won’t be surprised if any of you who are currently reading this article already found that one of them is installed on your Android! Blame Google guys, blame them.

Symantec explain that this malware work in two phase. First, users will download the main app from Google Play store. The moment after the installation process complete, it will automatically download other pack from Dropbox, which is named as activator.apk. The good thing is that premium SMS is only work in specific country, so if you’re happen to live outside the malware creator’s country of origin, you’re not losing anything at least.

Well, that’s a lesson for us all. I must admit that i’m also easily interested to that kind of stuffs. But i can tell you that i won’t download or install it unless i’m sure that it is published by trusted forum like XDA or RootsWiki. Plus, you can take some precautions by installing anti malware and anti virus program for android. That should do the job.

So, be careful guys. Safe gaming first!

Android, Apps, game, Google, GTA,