Last month, a Google employee responded to a report about increased Android malware by accusing virus companies of "playing on fears," but he may want to change his tune — a recent wave of attacks by a threat called RuFraud has caused Google to remove a total of 27 malicious apps from the Android Market. Mobile security company Lookout says it began notifying Google last week of the malware, which tricks users into agreeing to SMS charges by mimicking well-known apps such as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. While the first reported attack included nine apps that were downloaded by relatively few users, the second wave of 13 apps may have reached a wider audience — Lookout estimates over 14,000 downloads of the apps before Google pulled them from the Market. Based on the short codes found in RuFraud, it appears to only affect users in Eastern Europe as well as Great Britain, Italy, Israel, France, and Germany. What's more worrisome is that premium SMS toll fraud apps have been on the rise in recent months, and given the lack of a strict Android Market approval policy, there's little reason to think that these attacks couldn't be continued or even duplicated.