If your Android device suddenly began experiencing heating issues or losing charge faster than usual--beware. It may have turned into a coin-mining bot.
According to BBC, apps have been found both inside Google Play and outside it. They have code embedded in them for mining litecoin, dogecoin, and casinocoin virtual currencies without the user's knowledge. These apps are designed to squeeze hardware resources, leading to eventual damage of the device. The report was based on the findings of two firms Trend Micro and Look Security.
Coin mining is known to be hardware intensive,and legit miners usually employ a network of computers for the job. The process of mining is done using application specific integrated circuits. The hardware, time consumed and power to run the hardware is expensive, so the costs often outweigh the rewards of mining a small number of coins; that's why most people simply prefer to make profits on virtual currencies through trading.
The idea to embed mining codes in apps is aimed at tapping the processing power of a large number of networked devices, according to BBC.
BBC quoted Marc Rogers of Look Security, who pointed out the danger of the mining code. He said the code simply continues to drain the device without any resource management.
"It will drive the hardware to mine until it runs out of battery. Overheating associated with this kind of harsh use can also damage hardware," he said.
Trend Micro's Veo Zhang said in a blog post, "Phones do not have sufficient performance to serve as effective miners. Users will also quickly notice the odd behavior of the miners including poor battery performance and overheating."
Throwing light on Android Malware, Daily Tech reported that the Android platform attracts 97 percent of malware with other platforms accounting for the remaining 3 percent. It also said that most malware is found on Asian and Middle East third party app stores.
It added that only in 1 in 1000 apps in Google Play was found to contain malware which though is not significantly high but was higher than official stores of Microsoft and Apple.
