19 Jun 2013

Bad Piggies

Malware Found on Google Play Masquerading as Big Piggies

Creator of the popular game Angry Birds created another game called Bad Piggies. Bad Piggies is one of the top games available on Google Play. Some hacker noticed this and created a malicious malware app masquerading as Bad Piggies. This malware application was named as Bad Pigs and recorded over 10,000 downloads before the truth was revealed.

F-Secure, a security company noticed the application and wrote to Google on Wednesday June 12, 2013. F-Secure notified Google that the malware app called Bad Pigs used the same description and artworks as available on Bad Piggies. The only two difference that the two apps had was the name of creator and the name of the application. Bad Piggies has been developed by Rovio but malware app Bad Pigs had the name ‘Dan Stokes’ as the creator. F-Secure reported that Google removed this malware application from Google Play.

The original game Bad Piggies has performed very well on both iOS and Android platforms. It is because of this popularity that the hackers decided to create a copycat of the game and deceive the unsuspecting users. F-Secure reported that the users may have downloaded the malware when they downloaded the game Bad Pigs. F-Secure also stated that the malware, once downloaded, asked for permissions to access personal information and change settings as well as other permissions.

Though Google has set up different filters to detect these kinds of malicious applications (that include Trojans, Spyware and Malware) and block them, many of them have actually slipped through security cracks. Over the last two years, many of these malicious applications have managed to bypass the security set by Google and Bad Pigs is one of those. It is reported that the malware application masquerading as Big Piggies was introduced on Google Play on 25th May, 2013 and may have affected thousands of users.

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