Quote:Thirteen apps installed 560,000 times by Android users were recently found by security researcher Lukas Stefanko to have no real functionality besides spreading malware and posing as driving simulation games in the Google Play Store.

Stefanko described his findings in a series of Twitter posts: once installed and launched on the Android device, the apps developed and published by Luiz O Pinto will hide by deleting their icon and prompting the victims to download an extra APK Android application package.

Following the installation of the APK file, the fake apps will start displaying apps on the compromised devices and, according to some reports, causing the Android device to slow down noticeably.

Although Stefanko was not able to pinpoint the exact malware family used by the attackers behind these fake apps, but a VirusTotal scan of the APK used to drop the ad-distributing malware on the infected Android devices does provide a few hits.

At least two anti-malware suites label it as the Hiddad Trojan, a few of them identify it as a Trojan using heuristics, while a few others mark it as an unknown risk.