Experts Trend Micro found more than 800 applications for Android, which contain a dangerous Xavier virus. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the software is distributed not in third-party repositories, but through the official Google Play Store.

Xavier virus can install additional malicious software on the device, steal personal data, monitor the user. According to experts, malware helps other malicious programs infect Android-devices.

Xavier is a kind of advertising library that integrates into free applications and collects advertising revenues that software developers receive. According to Trend Micro, malware easily bypasses the security system Google Play.

The Trojan is able to remotely execute arbitrary code that is received from the management server, and also steals user data, including the device ID and model, the operating system version, the manufacturer, the communication operator, the mailing address, the list of installed applications, and so on.

Xavier is hiding in free programs.

Among the infected software there are both photo applications and simple utilities for changing the ringtone.

Experts have found that the most infected Android-smartphones and tablets are in the countries of Southeast Asia, the US and Europe. In total, infected programs were downloaded from Google Play millions of times.

To avoid infection, experts recommend downloading applications only from trusted developers, read reviews and restrict programs access to data on the device.