New Android malware infects millions of smartphones

Android users have been alerted to watch out for a raft of popular apps that were available on the Google Play store which appear to cause malicious ad pop ups.

Internet and mobile security experts Avast said that one particular app involved – a card game called Durak, has already been downloaded 10 million times, based on the Google Play counter. Google now has blocked access to the app and others that were alleged to contain the malicious Android malware code.

Avast notes that the issue was first brought to light when someone alerted it after their own personal investigations on a Nexus smartphone had become infected. The adware apparently caused pop-up messages to appear but they looked like normal system notifications, saying that his phone was slow and that new software was necessary to fix the problem. Following the prompts resulted in being directed to other apps, many of which were also malicious.