More Malware-Infected Apps for Google Android Market

It’s been a tough 2011 for the Google Android (News - Alert) Market as yet again they are forced to remove 27 applications because they were malware-infected.

In early June it was reported that 25 infected applications were eliminated from the Google (News - Alert) Android Market after already affecting 30,000 to 120,000 smartphone users. According to an article from Pocket Now, the malware was called “DroidDreamLight” and was stealing information related to IMEI numbers and model names.

A week later it was reported in June that 25 apps were deleted; another 10 apps were removed for also being compromised. Due to their stealth nature, as reported in PC Mag, they went undetected in the market for more than two months.

Lookout, a mobile security company based in San Francisco, stated in their blog that the new malware-infected apps primarily targeted users in Europe. They’re calling it the “RuFraud” scam that appears as an app for popular games such as Angry Birds and also as an horoscope application.

According to BBC, the scam would appear to be the real game or program gaining the user’s trust, but once downloaded the users were giving the phone “permission” to send a premium text message costing nearly $4.

Lookout also released their “Malware: 2012 Mobile Malware Predictions“ on Tuesday that reported that U.S. Android users will most likely click on an unsafe link 40 percent of the time.

“When mobile malware producers are able to steadily increase profits from infections more than they pay to infect devices, the industry will grow rapidly,” stated in the report; adding, “There are a number of trends seen in 2011 that we expect to carry over into 2012 (perhaps at a greater rate) that will drive down the cost of infection and drive up profitability.”

As reported by BBC, Lookout believes nearly 14,000 downloads of these infected apps containing RuFraud have taken place. Countries including Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Czech Republic, Poland, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Latvia, France, Ukraine, etc. are believed to be affected by the scam.

Currently, the Android Market is so large Google doesn’t actually examine each app that goes into the market compared to competitors Microsoft and Apple (News - Alert) who does. Google has stated this is meant to give small business applications a chance to succeed and grow, but so far it’s causing more infections and scams.

“The flexibility of the Android Market is great, but that comes at a potential price to security,” said David Emm, a security researcher for Kaspersky. “It will become a potentially bigger problem in the future. Android’s market share is going up, and so is the number of malware-infected mobile software.”