New malware infects Play Store apps, nests itself in phone's root folder and downloads endless ads

Android developer Cheetah Mobile — known for products, such as Clean Master, CM Launcher, CM Security, and Battery Doctor — reports that it has discovered a nasty malware lurking in apps found in the official Play Store. Dubbed Ghost Push, it's a nasty, nasty trojan, which will reportedly nest itself in the phone's root folder and refuse to be removed unless special tools are used.

The malware is reported to have branched up in many variants, and is distributed through popular apps in forums, 3rd party app stores, and even Google's official Play Store. It is said that 900,000 Android devices across 116 countries have been infected. Apps that carry the trojan are repackaged versions of various calculators, smart or assistive touch apps, Talking Tom 3, and many others – usually popular software solutions that users would easily trust. Thankfully, the infected apps have been reportedly pulled from the Play Store and more popular app stores at the time of writing this article.

What Ghost Push and its branched-out siblings would do is they would nest themselves in the user's phone and then begin pushing ads, even installing other infected apps on the device. The end goal is to push as many ads as possible and the report suggests that the hackers have been making more than 4 million dollars per day.

Cheetah Mobile claims to have developed a tool that can find and get rid of Ghost Push infecting your device. You can find a link to its Play Store page below.

Download Ghost Push Trojan Killer