Important Facts For Prelims
Agent Smith Malware
- 11 Jul 2019
- 2 min read
A study by Check point research (a cybersecurity services provider) has revealed that “Agent Smith”, a new variant of smartphone malware, has infected around 25 million Android devices globally, including 15 million mobile devices in India.
- Agent smith malware exploits known android vulnerabilities and automatically replaces installed apps with malicious versions without the user's knowledge or interaction.
- Malware currently uses its broad access to the resources of the mobile device to show fraudulent ads for financial gain, and could easily be used for far more intrusive and harmful cyber attacks such as banking credential theft and eavesdropping.
- Check Point Research notes that the activity of Agent Smith resembles how other malware like CopyCat, Gooligan, and HummingBad have operated in the past.
- All three malware campaigns have generated huge revenue through fraudulent ads on virus infected android devices.
- “Agent Smith” was originally downloaded from the widely used third-party app store, 9Apps and targeted mostly Hindi, Arabic, Russian and Indonesian-speaking users.
- Primary victims of malware are based in India though other Asian countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh and the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States have also been impacted by the malware.
