Page 40 - Cyber Defense eMagazine Annual RSA Edition for 2024
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But it has happened more than once…
In August 2017, the tiny African county São Tomé and Príncipe was hit by a mass botnet infection. While
there were only 8,200 mobile phones on the island, 12%, or over 1,000 mobile phones, were likely
infected with the WireX malware. This was up from 3 infections in July 2017.
Table 1: São Tomé and Príncipe IP Reputation Data
McAfee’s Mobile Research Team identified a new version of HiddenAds malware on the Google Play
Store in August 2022 that disguised itself as various cleaner apps. The malware was updated with the
ability to start on its own once installed and had infected over 1 million devices globally.
Top affected countries include South Korea, Japan, and Brazil.
Figure 1. Top affected countries (including South Korea, Japan, and Brazil) by new HiddenAds malware.
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