Invariably, the most targeted mobile platform by hackers is the Android platform.

A couple of months back, The Hacker News reported that a new malware for Android platform has been detected that lodges in the memory of the infected device and launches itself during the OS booting phase. Upon removing the malware, some parts of the malware will remain in the memory of the device and will re-install the malware after a reboot, thus infecting the device once again without any intervention.

According to BGR, "Only Android users from certain regions of the world are affected because Google's standard Android services aren't available to them. "

The earlier version of the threat was named as 'Oldboot.A' by Russian security firm Doctor Web and it has affected more than a million devices thus far. These are some of the affected regions across the world, China, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Brazil, the USA and some Southeast Asian countries.

The recent news is that, there is a new variant of the Oldboot family, dubbed 'Oldboot.B', engineered similar to the earlier version of Oldboot spreading across the world. This malware has very advanced and twisted stealth techniques that they can be defensive against antivirus, malware analyzer, and even automatic analysis tools, according to researchers from Chinese security firm 360 Mobile Security.

The new Oldboot.B Android malware can install malicious apps in the background, inject malicious system process modules, and can defend malware apps from uninstalling even with manual intervention. This malware also has the capability to modify the browser's homepage and uninstall the antivirus software in the device. In addition, the infected devices can send fake text messages, and start phishing attacks, among the others.

Do we Have an Antivirus Software?

According to The Hack News, the security firm 360 Mobile Security has developed an antivirus software that can detect and remove Oldboot malware for free. Users can download the same from their website.

How to Avoid Such Attacks?

Here are the three ways one can avoid getting attacked by sophisticated malwares of any kind, claims The Hacker News.

- As a rule of thumb, Android users should install apps only from trusted sources.

- Users should ascertain the Android system setting 'Unknown sources' is unchecked to thwart dropped or drive-by-download app installations.

- Users should avoid using questionable custom ROMs.

- Users must install a credible mobile security app.