New Android malware most stealthy yet

Known as Plankton, a new Android malware is able to secretly download further payloads to the mobile device

A North Carolina-based academic has discovered a new form of malware prevalent in the Andoid marketplace.

The malware, named Plankton, reportedly evades most detection techniques.

It was discovered by Xuxian Jiang, assistant professor, department of computer science at North Carolina State University.

Jiang gave details of the malware in a security alert posted on the university's website.

"Plankton is the first malware we are aware of that exploits Dalvik class loading capability to stay undetected and dynamically extend its own functionality," he wrote.

Dalvik is a virtual machine designed for mobile systems running within the Android operating system (OS).

Plankton is designed to steal an infected device's ID and be able to secretly download further malware onto the device.

Google has removed the 10 apps found to be infected so far.

The Android OS has suffered from several malware outbreaks in the past, most notably the DroidDream trojan earlier this year.

Security expert Kaspersky Labs released a report earlier this year stating that malware aimed at mobile devices would double in 2011 compared with 2010 levels.