‘Malware’ is a term, which did not pertain to mobile phones until the developments in the technologies arose. One couldn’t find the sources from which viruses attacked the operating system of phones. And such cases were more prevalent during the usage of Symbian OS. As the technology progressed, the concept of antivirus came out and protected the phone to some extent.
Although, currently there are issues stating the major spread of viruses over such installed antiviruses in the phones, efforts are made to lessen the impact of such viruses. Let’s take a look at some of the top viruses which fetched a place in history via their impact…
1) Dr.Sheep-Android
The Dr.Sheep virus is one of the most predominant ones in today’s world. It occurs at the basic stage of authentication. When one enters one’s username and password, this virus would capture that information and corrupt the account pertaining to the corresponding username and password. It appears in forms of plug-ins which arise in the due course of the authentication process. This is equivalent to the Firesheep feature of Mozilla. Hackers have a cakewalk by injecting this virus in the people’s gadgets who they want to attack.
2) Cabir Virus
This is one of the prominent virus from the Symbian OS era. During the time when Bluetooth was used extensively for data transmission, this virus was highly prevalent. This virus gets transmitted via Bluetooth from one point to another, and once this virus affects the phone, it drops in a message stating an acknowledgment to its user of its arrival. Cabir virus, once injected into the gadget, sucks the battery capacity of the phone so drastically that one can see the charge level dropping from 80% to 10% in 15-20 minutes. It employs this scenario by enabling the Bluetooth frequently, without the knowledge of the user, and once Bluetooth is enabled, the battery level slides down drastically.
3) Skulls Virus
Skulls virus has its roots from the internet. It is one of the most infectious viruses as it erases all the app data. The mobile phone would be forbidden from any app utility and would turn into a tool of just call incoming and outgoing. All icons in the phone would be replaced by skull icons with a tag titled “skull”.
4) Android plankton
Planktons are one of the viruses that hit the framework portion. It destroys the application framework of any application when the app is getting installed. It achieves this by changing the path name of the app directory to the plankton’s control folder, which in turn creates unnecessary shortcuts in folders and home screen. Such kind of planktons, at times, come with the application itself or reside as an aftermath of any previously installed apps.
5) Battery doctor
“Battery doctor” is generally referred to those apps which are bound to enhance the battery life of your phone. But such applications send some of the most information to the server when the phone is connected to the internet. They make use of the HTTP which one employs during a web access and web search. As they operate using the internet access, they tend to bring in a lot of advertisements and display in your gadget. They bring in such a huge amount of advertisements that your display gets occupied fully of such commercials overlaying the content you wanted to actually view.
6) CommWarrior Virus
The CommWarrior virus is the one that is bound to incur a heavy loss to the user whose gadget gets infected by it. This virus spreads over messaging and Bluetooth. If your gadget is infected by this virus, you can see yourself ending up in paying high bills. The virus sends first an acknowledgment to the user whose phone is infected and then sends a multimedia message to all the contacts where in a link will be given and by visiting that link, others phone also gets infected by the virus. In case, of two phones connected via Bluetooth, the virus transmits its source folder from one phone to another without the acknowledgment of neither sender nor the receiver.
7) Locknut Virus
The Locknut virus was one of the earliest viruses ever originated in mobile phones. It affected the important files in the gadget. It spreads via the internet downloads. The virus employs a step by step procedure. It infects single file at a time, and once it infects a file, that file cannot be opened. In this method, it locks every file that it affects, and at last locks the entire phone.
8) BaseBridge
Base Bridge is one of the grave viruses currently present in android phones. It uses a privilege elevation method which instructs the processor to allocate top privilege to the virus so that the virus can process what it needs to. BaseBridge uses the HTTP access and this makes it to be at its vulnerable best when the gadget is connected to the internet. It transfers highly confidential information via the HTTP servers and it also reads messages, both online and offline as well.
9) PJApps
PJApps is a generic term that refers to those apps that can be exploited by publicly available equipment. These viruses are not too grave but still, fit in the illegal zone. If you see an app that is usually a paid app, say a game or an application of Microsoft, for instance, and if you see that application avai lable for free, it is an infected version and lets this virus to conquer your gadget once you download it.
10) Doomboot Virus
The Doomboot virus is a kind of virus which gives out additional viruses other than playing its self-portions in damaging the gadget. It comes in via Bluetooth as well as Internet downloads. Once it completes its damage to the gadget, it gives rise to other viruses such as the CommWarrior virus.
It first infects a file and then puts in the other viruses into the infected file. This virus doesn’t allow the phone to get rebooted and brings the phone’s functionalities to a halt. Also, the charge capacity also affects due to the virus enabling the Bluetooth frequently.
Viruses are too hard to handle as they affect in the common phenomenon of our perspective. If you feel your gadget is facing any issues mentioned above, ensure that you take some protective measures, for it is better late than never!!
