Find cryptocurrency miners hidden among Google Play applications

Experts from Kaspersky Lab, a company dedicated to computer security, have found in several applications hosted on Google Play programs that secretly produced cryptocurrencies.

All the profits generated through these applications are destined to the creators of the hidden miners, while the owners of the smart phones only have problems: the other applications of the phone slow down, the device runs out of charge quickly, and warms up , which can lead to different flaws in its operation.

The experts of Kaspersky Lab have explained the special danger posed by the detected cryptonineros: the programs carry out the functions that appear in the shop description, and therefore they can not notice the hidden work they do. In particular, the miners were integrated into programs intended, according to the official description, to watch football.

"The user downloads a football application and the hidden miner extracts a digital coin"
"The user downloads a football application, enjoys the game and, at that moment, the hidden miner extracts a digital coin for its owners." It is quite difficult to realize this: first, the user simply does not pay attention to other things during the game, then the video also heats up the phone and discharges the battery, as well as the miner ", they detail from Kaspersky Lab.

According to experts, one of these programs, PlacarTV, with the embedded Coinhive Miner miner, which produces the Montero cryptocurrency, has been downloaded from Google Play more than 100,000 times. PlacarTV was removed from the app store only after experts from Kaspersky Lab warned about its danger.

But the Vilny.net application, to create a VPN connection, which according to specialists also has a built-in miner, is still available for download from Google Play. The special danger of this cryptanal is that you can track the temperature and the level of charge of the phone. As a result, in case of a threat of overheating or deactivation of the smartphone, the program suspends the mining process in order to prevent the owner of the device from suspecting that something bad is happening.