Shedun

Shedun is a family of malware software (also known as Kemoge, Shiftybug and Shuanet^[1][2][3]) targeting the Android operating system first identified in late 2015 by mobile security company Lookout, affecting roughly 20,000^[4] popular Android applications.^{[3][5][6][7][8]} Lookout claimed the HummingBad malware was also a part of the Shedun family, however, these claims were refuted.^[9][10]

Avira Protection Labs stated that Shedun family malware is detected to cause approximately 1500-2000 infections per day.^[11] All three variants of the virus are known to share roughly ~80% of the same source code.^[12][13]

In mid 2016, arstechnica reported that approximately 10.000.000 devices would be infected by this malware^[14] and that new infections would still be surging.^[15][16]

The malware's primary attack vector is repackaging legitimate Android applications (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Candy Crush, Google Now, Snapchat^[17])^[4][18][19] with adware included. The app which remains functional is then released to a third party app store;^[20] once downloaded, the application generates revenue by serving ads (estimated to amount to $2 US per installation^[19]), most users cannot get rid of the virus without getting a new device, as the only other way to get rid of the malware is to root affected devices and re-flash a custom ROM.^[21][22]

In addition, Shedun-type malware has been detected pre-installed on 26 different types^[23] of Chinese Android-based hardware such as Smartphones and Tablet computers.^{[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]}

Shedun-family malware is known for auto-rooting the Android OS^[18][37] using well-known exploits like ExynosAbuse, Memexploit and Framaroot^[38] (causing a potential privilege escalation^[19][39][40])^[41] and for serving trojanized adware and installing themselves within the system partition of the operating system, so that not even a factory reset can remove the malware from infected devices.^[42][43]

Shedun malware is known for targeting the Android Accessibility Service,^{[2][42][44][45][46][47][48]} as well as for downloading and installing arbitrary applications^[49] (usually adware) without permission.^[3] It is classified as "aggressive adware" for installing potentially unwanted program^[50][51][52] applications and serving ads.^[53]

As of April 2016, Shedun malware is considered by most security researchers to be next to impossible to entirely remove.^{[54][55][56][57][58][59]}

Avira Security researcher Pavel Ponomariov, who specializes in Android malware detection tools, mobile threat detection, and mobile malware detection automation research,^[60] has published an in-depth analysis of this malware.^[11]

The countries most infected by this virus were in Asia including China, India, Philippines, Indonesia and Turkey.^[61]