Fake update for Angry Birds secretly hacks your phone

You phone isn’t really in that much danger, just know that you shouldn’t carelessly accept an app without knowing what it is doing. A “Angry Birds” lookalike app ended up being released around the same time the real Angry Birds update came about on the Android Marketplace.

The lookalike app was being tested by a group of researchers who wanted to test how easily it would be for a real hacker to get access into you phone and pinpoint certain security flaws. Hiding behind the update you think you have installed, the app actually installs a whole bunch of secret programs in you phone that makes it possible for them to track your phone’s location, your contact list, and even send expensive text messages - all without you knowing what’s really going on.

Thankfully, the experiment app won’t do any real damage to your phone if you accidentally installed it instead of the real update but it’s still pretty scary to hear of how effortlessly it would’ve taken a real hacker to accomplish this task.

Source