Discovered a virus that physically damage the smartphone

Smartphone battery becomes unusable.

The researchers found a new type of malicious Android apps that are used to mining cryptocurrency Monero. The operation of these programs during the mining of cryptocurrencies are able to harm the device physically.

A family of viruses, which is also used to display advertisements, auto-signing for paid services and DDoS attacks called Loapi.

The fact that the virus Loapi requires you to grant it administrator privileges. After that, it begins to load various malicious modules.

“The modular structure Loapi implies that it can on the fly change in the functions by a command from the remote server yourself by downloading and installing the right add. On command from remote malware can download new modules — that is, to learn anything. For example, it can turn into a blackmailer, a banking Trojan or a spy”, – the experts of Kaspersky Lab, who discovered this family of viruses.

One of these modules uses a smartphone to mine Monero tokens. It is this function and can overheat your phone because of the long operation of the CPU at maximum load. Two days after infection in the test mobile from overheating swollen battery.

According to the researchers, the malware spread through advertising banners, and usually masquerades as antivirus or pornographic app. There are no indications that the malware may spread via Google Play.

“Only install applications from official stores. For greater reliability decline in your Android installation of apps from unknown sources”, – stressed the experts of Kaspersky Lab.

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