Google has just removed nearly 300 applications from the Store. The Mountain View company realized that these applications could secretly divert Android smartphones to perform DDOS (denial of service) attacks.
Wirex botnet Ddos play store android
It was the researchers of the cloud Akamai service provider who discovered the pot with roses. Suspicions began when a hotel company was the victim of a DDoS attack involving hundreds of thousands of IP addresses.
As a reminder, DDoS attacks are based on the saturation of a target by large amounts of data from multiple IP addresses, allowing Web sites or services to be planted that cannot contain this influx of data. This type of attack had been used by a hacker to bring down one by one the racist and homophobic sites.
In fact, the researchers discovered that the wire botnet, concealed within the Play Store's applications, secretly used smartphones assigned to lift an army of devices and launch DDoS. As long as the smartphones remained on, they were under the control of this evil bot.
Play Store: the WireX malware can hijack your smartphone to launch a DDoS
The affected applications include applications offering services of ringtones or managers of storage. In total, Google has already removed 300 applications from the Store and continues to do the cleaning. According to the researchers, near 70 000 more machines in 100 countries could be affected by WireX. Some users have also received ransom requests, as in the case of a type ransomware attack.
Researchers at Google, Akamai, Cloudflare, Flashpoint, Team Cymru and other companies are working hand in hand to try to combat this botnet since August 17. Together, they investigate skimming the historical, which enabled them to establish a connection between the IP of the attackers and malware.
These professionals invite companies victims of DDoS attacks to share detailed data on these attacks, in order to combat this scourge more effectively and to learn more about it. Google is now using the Learning Machine to fight against problem applications, and its efforts are starting to pay off, but the Android malwares are increasingly numerous and daunting .
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