It was ultimately unavoidable, sooner or later someone would take advantage of the open-state of our wonderful OS and attempt to exploit and use it for malicious purposes, and this day has come unfortunately. The Android Market was flooded with 21 clones of popular apps. Lompolo from Reddit discovered that these duplicated versions were injected with the “rageagainstthecage” exploit, which is a brute forcer of sorts that gains root access to the device, and upon a successful injection would send your IMEI and IMSI numbers to a website. The total potential of this new malware is basically limitless as it as has the ability to download new code, which means it had a backdoor which would allow future entry once the initial exploit was applied.
All the apps found from that user have been removed, however this doesn’t mean there’s not more. Google responded to the matter rather quickly once Android Police reported it, removing all the apps within 5 mins from first contact. They removed the publishers content from the market entirely and all the exploited apps have been remotely removed from devices. We will deliver more news as we get it. Check out the screen shots provided by Android Police to see the difference in the original apps and the duplicated ones.
Source: Android Police
