Android smartphone owners have been warned by cyber security experts about malware that overloads your phone, causing it to physically burst open.
Researchers at Kaspersky Lab intentionally infected an Android phone with the new species of malware.
Two days after it was first infected, the malware had overloaded the phone’s battery causing the device to bulge and physically warp.
Kaspersky Lab described the malware as a “jack of all trades”, as it’s capable of carrying out a multitude of nefarious actions.
The trojan can overwhelm a phone with adverts, use the device’s computing power to mine cryptocurrencies and spam contacts with text messages.
Kaspersky Lab said the only thing missing from the malware is “user espionage”, meaning it doesn’t spy or monitor the phone’s activities.
The cybersecurity experts said the terrifying malware was discovered behind more than 20 adverts claiming to promote anti-virus or porn apps.
In a blog post, Kaspersky said: “Nowadays, it’s all too easy to end up with malicious apps on your smartphone, even if you’re using the official Google Play app store.
“The situation gets even worse when you go somewhere other than the official store – fake applications, limited security checks, and so on.
“However, the spread of malware targeting Android OS is not limited to unofficial stores – advertising, SMS-spam campaigns and other techniques are also used.
“Among this array of threats we found a rather interesting sample – Trojan.AndroidOS.Loapi.
“This Trojan boasts a complicated modular architecture that means it can conduct a variety of malicious activities: mine cryptocurrencies, annoy users with constant ads, launch DDoS attacks from the affected device and much more.
“We’ve never seen such a ‘jack of all trades’ before.”
Kaspersky published pictures showing the impact having the malware installed on an Android phone can physically do to it.
The pictures show the device warped, with the battery bulging and damaging the phone cover because of the load caused by the malicious trojan.
Kaspersky said: “As part of our dynamic malware analysis we installed the malicious application on a test device.
“The images below show what happened to it after two days.
“Because of the constant load caused by the mining module and generated traffic, the battery bulged and deformed the phone cover.”
The news comes after dangerous malware has even hidden on official app download portals like the Google Play store.
Earlier this year Express.co.uk revealed millions of Android devices may have been infected by malware from dozens of apps on the Google Play store.
Android owners were put on alert over fears 36.5million devices may have been infected by malware from apps on the Google Play store.
The Judy malware campaign produced fake advertising clicks in order to generate revenues for those behind it, security firm Check Point said in May.
Experts feared some 41 malicious apps which were downloaded up to 18.5m times from the Google Play store spread the malware.
The apps were removed from the Google Play store after Check Point informed the tech giant about the threat.
At the time Check Point said the Judy malware campaign was “possibly the largest malware campaign found on Google Play.”
Describing how it works, Check Point said: “Once a user downloads a malicious app, it silently registers receivers which establish a connection with the [Command and Control] server.
“The server replies with the actual malicious payload, which includes JavaScript code, a user-agent string and URLs controlled by the malware author.
“The malware opens the URLs using the user agent that imitates a PC browser in a hidden webpage and receives a redirection to another website.
“Once the targeted website is launched, the malware uses the JavaScript code to locate and click on banners from the Google ads infrastructure.”
The malware was named ‘Judy’ after the cutesy character ‘Judy the chef’ who appears in most of the affected apps.