Android Malware Will Destroy Your Phone. No Ifs and Buts About It[source: bleepingcomputer]

20 Dec 2017

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A malware strain known as Loapi will damage phones if users don’t remove it from their devices. Left to its own means, this modular threat will download a Monero cryptocurrency miner that will overheat and overwork the phone’s components, which will make the battery bulge, deform the phone’s cover, or even worse.

Discovered by Kaspersky Labs, researchers say Loapi appears to have evolved from Podec, a malware strain spotted in 2015.

Back then, crooks were using Podec to bypass Advice of Charge (AoC) and CAPTCHAs to subscribe victims to premium-rate SMS services.

The new Loapi malware is much more advanced compared to the simplistic Podec strain. Kaspersky experts call it a “jack of all trades,” as Loapi has a highly advanced modular structure and components for all sorts of nasty operations. For example, the new Loapi malware includes modules for:

⇉ Mine Monero
⇉ Install a proxy to relay traffic
⇉ Inject ads in notification area
⇉ Show ads in other apps
⇉ Open URLs in browsers, also used to show ads
⇉ Download and install other apps
⇉ Launch DDoS attacks
⇉ Interact with the phone’s SMS function
⇉ Crawl web pages (most like used to subscribe users to premium SMS services), and more.

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