20 year old amasses €500,000 with malicious Android apps

Malicious apps may be a problem for all the innocent Android smartphones users out there, but to the ones making them, malicious apps clearly seem to have a lot of money-making possibilities  as is evident by the €500,000 ($653,000 or £405,000) that a 20-year old guy in northern France was able to accumulate by making such malicious Android apps.

Working out of the basement of his parents’ home since 2011, he created fake apps parading as legitimate apps and published them for free, which when downloaded by users would send a text message to a premium-rate number he had set up, and would also send him login IDs and passwords to gaming and gambling sites.

The guy has since been arrested, and is reported to be quite smart despite not having received any formal training or education (just like those guys from the movies, hmm?). He also said that he was not motivated by greed and did it out of his love for computers and his aspirations to become a software developer. Well, I’d like to believe him, but unless he has been masquerading as Robin Hood and helping the poor and underprivileged with that money, which he clearly hasn’t, it is difficult to believe that all this was done just for kicks.

Have you ever been a victim of malware on your Android device? Do let us know in the comments.