A malicious software campaign, dubbed “CopyCat,” infected millions of devices running Google’s mobile Android operating system and raked in more than a million dollars through fraudulent advertising and app installations, researchers at the Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies said Thursday.
The malware operation, which peaked during April and May 2016, spread to as many as 14 million phones and tablets and garnered as much as $1.5 million in the space of those two months, the researchers said. The epidemic, which Google all but quashed a year ago, appeared to have spread through third party app stores and phishing attacks, rather than through the official Google Play app.
Daniel Padon, a mobile security researcher at Check Point, told Fortune that his team reported the operation to Google in March soon after discovering it. By then Google already had taken care of much of the problem .
Google estimates that fewer than 50,000 devices are still affected. The search giant has since adapted its protections to block the malware from gaining a foothold on Android devices, even ones running older software versions, the company told Fortune.
During the time that CopyCat was in full force however, the malware gained “root” control over 8 million devices, and used that power to serve more than 100 million bogus ads and install 4.9 million apps on phones and tablets, generating substantial revenues for the cybercriminals. The malware achieved this by using a handful of exploits to take advantage of security holes in Android versions 5 and earlier, and then by hijacking a part of the Android…
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