Ghost Push is a malware family that exploits vulnerabilities to gain root access to Android devices to then download and review other apps in the background. Using social engineering, users are tricked into downloading Ghost Push from third party app stores or via links sent in text messages. Once installed, Ghost Push tries to gain root access. As the name suggests, Ghost Push acts in a ghostly fashion once it has root access, meaning infected users don’t notice anything – everything happens in the background. Recently, a new variant of the Ghost Push malware, Gooligan, was detected spreading in the wild. The Gooligan variant steals email addresses and authentication tokens stored on the infected devices, gaining access to users’ Google account data, including Gmail and Google Play. More than one million users’ Google Play accounts were affected.
