By Andrew Brandt
Most of yesterday, Threat Research Analyst Armando Orozco and I took a closer look at a piece of malware discovered by a university security researcher, Xuxian Jiang of North Carolina State. The malicious code, which the malware creator named Plankton, is embedded into a number of apps that were briefly posted to Google’s Android Market earlier this week, then rapidly pulled down after the researchers informed Google of their initial findings.
The Plankton code appears in a number of applications that were all focused on the popular game series Angry Birds. Some of the samples we looked at came as Android apps with names like Angry Birds Rio Unlocker v1.0, Angry Birds Multi User v1.00 or Angry Birds Cheater Trainer Helper V2.0.
When executed, the program displays the following text on the screen:
Welcome!
Simply click on the button below to unlock ALL levels in Angry Birds Rio. This will not delete your scores but might change the number of pineapples and bananas you have
None of the programs function as advertised. Instead, the malicious apps install additional code into the Android device into which they’re installed. These additional functions provide remote access and control of the Android device to, presumably, the distributor of the malicious apps, whose identity remains unknown at this time.
