A team of researchers from Check Point has claimed that they have found one of the biggest malware which could have infected more than 21.1 million victims.
The team named this malware as ExpensiveWall after it’s quality of hiding inside wallpaper apps. The researchers had warned that the malware sent fraudulent premium SMS messages and charged for fake services.
According to the data from Google Play, ExpensiveWall infected at least 50 apps, which together were downloaded between 1 million and 4.2 million times.
Daniel Padon, a mobile researcher at Check Point told Forbes, “ExpensiveWall was probably second only to Judy, though he couldn't put an estimate on how much the criminals made in the latest explosion in SMS fraud.”
Google hadn't responded to a request for comment by Forbes.
The team of researchers told Google about the malware findings on August 7. While, Google immediately removed incriminating apps, and in response to this the hackers uploaded another sample to Google Play that infected at least 5,000 devices.
ExpensiveWall also stores the data about the infected device, including location and IP address. The hackers could force users to click on online advertisements, another money-making scheme to obtains the maximum profit out of it.