'However, one thing for sure is that the security mechanisms put in place by the official stores cannot cope with these kinds of scams,' Unuchek concluded. Unuchek added that there is a definite possibility that several more fake antivirus apps will appear in app stores. Scammers who want to make a quick buck from inattentive users are selling dozens of fake apps, copying the design, but not the functionality of the original,' said Roman Unuchek, Kaspersky Lab Senior Malware Analyst.

Now we are seeing how one successful scam spawns numerous clones. 'The story of paid fake AV for mobiles started with the appearance of Virus Shield in the Google Play store. Google gave refunds to the users who downloaded the app, along with store credit worth US$5. Google has since pulled the app from Google Play, but not before the app reached downloads of over 10,000. An app named Virus Shield was tested by Android Police, and results showed that the app did not do anything despite costing US$3.99. Kaspersky Lab's warnings come not long after a similar incident in Google Play. Kaspersky Lab products detected the app as a Trojan. When opened, the app simply displays random statements on top of the official logo of Kaspersky. The creators of Kaspersky Antivirus 2014, on the other hand, didn't even attempt to simulate a virus scan. It is a rule that antivirus apps do not show separate progress bars for the scan progress and the heuristic analysis, blasting the authenticity of this app. However, the app shows two bars, one for the progress of the scan and another for heuristic analysis. When opened, the Kaspersky Mobile app pretends to start scanning the user's phone.

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