Pokemon Go has become a highlight for the year 2016 and the augmented reality game seemingly cannot to stay out of the news. Niantic recently announced that the game has been downloaded around 500 million times since its launch, but the latest reports suggest that the game has also received the unwanted attention of hackers.
Security software firm Kaspersky Lab recently reported a Pokemon Go related malicious app on Google Play named ‘Guide for Pokemon Go” that was capable of giving root access of Android smartphones to hackers. According to Google Play, the app had been downloaded over 500,000 times before being pulled.
However, only 6,000 out of around 500,000 devices have been affected as the malware doesn’t get activated right away. It is important to note that India is among the locations where successful infection has taken place.
Kaspersky elaborates on the the activation delay, saying, “It waits for the user to install or uninstall another app, then checks to see if that app runs on a real device or on a virtual machine. If it turns out that it’s dealing with a device, the Trojan will wait for a further two hours before starting its malicious activity.”
According to Kaspersky Lab, its analysis of the app revealed that it included a ‘malicious’ piece of code that downloads rooting malware, which is capable of gaining access to core Android operating system. The company’s software detect the Trojan as ‘HEUR:Trojan.AndroidOS.Ztorg.ad.’
The company claims that there at least one more version of this app was also available through Google Play in July 2016. It further said that it has tracked at least nine other apps infected with this Trojan and available through Google Play “at different times since 2015.”
It is recommended that users pay attention while downloading apps that are related to popular applications and games as hackers might take advantage of slight carelessness shown by you.
