Malicious bot may be stealing your mobile data, draining battery

Mobile data is precious commodity, and whether or not we are prudent with our money, we surely are judicious when it comes to using data.

Now, there’s a new bot in the virtual space that’s affecting Android apps. It can eat up around 10GB of data and drain battery life really quick.

A software gets installed on Android devices and downloads gigabytes of video ads without the user’s knowledge. It is a code that infects apps, and thereby infects smartphones when users download these apps. DrainerBot has affected hundreds of Android apps which have been downloaded over 10 million times.

DrainerBot was first discovered last year by Oracle researchers who traced it down to a Dutch firm called Tapcore. But Tapcore denied any knowledge and revealed that they had launched an internal investigation into the matter.

And because the fraud was done on apps via Google Play Store, the tech giant had subsequently blacklisted all apps that were marked malicious. However, there are some infected apps still available on Play Store.

Oracle also advised users to observe if their smartphone gets hot and battery life drains quickly even if the phone is not being used heavily. Along with these signs, Android users should also track their data usage and see if there is a spike that shouldn’t be there.