Pokémon Go guide app with half a million downloads hacks Android devices

Security researchers have found a malicious application on Google Play that had over 500,000 downloads and was designed to gain complete control over Android devices.

The application masqueraded as a guide for the popular Pokémon Go game and used multiple layers of obfuscation to bypass Google Play’s malware detection mechanisms, researchers from Kaspersky Lab said in a blog post.

The app contains a malicious module that doesn’t execute immediately. Instead, the app waits for another application to be installed or uninstalled in order to determine if it’s running on a real device or in an emulated environment, like the ones used to detect malware.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here