The mobile threat landscape is rapidly evolving due to the fact that mobile phones are increasingly becoming an attractive and abundant target to cybercriminals. It seems that there are new threats evolving on a daily basis, and it is vital to be proactive in our defenses against them.
Our researchers at Norton have recently discovered a number of “Porn Clicker” malware apps on the Google Play Store. Porn Clickers are a type of malware that silently connect with pornographic websites in order to fraudulently earn the developer of the malware, click-through advertising revenue. This malware frequently misrepresents itself as a legitimate app, sets itself to start automatically on each reboot and will silently connect to the Internet without the users’ consent.
Users should care about this type of malware because it can consume bandwidth, reduce battery life and reduce the performance of a users’ device. Users should also take care because any malware developer who is willing to make a buck off your device through click fraud cannot be trusted to have ANY access to your device or personal information, as that has the potential to be stolen as well.
While Google has been notified of the malicious nature of these apps, it may take them a while to be removed. You can protect yourself and your device right now by using Norton Mobile Security, available from the Google Play Store. Norton Mobile Security’s App Advisor provides proactive protection from malicious apps before you download them. App Advisor scans apps in the Google Play Store looking for features that can invade privacy; display annoying/intrusive behaviors such as pop up ads or excessive battery usage, and unnecessary data usage. It will also detect if an app contains malware or is malicious in nature.
The following is a list of the applications the Norton team has discovered:
