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Security experts have warned that Android owners who find their battery life failing could have had their phones hijacked by hackers using it to mine bitcoin.

They have found 'rogue' apps that allow hackers to mine for bitcoin in the background.

Although Google has already removed dozens of the apps, security firm Lookout warns there could be more out there.

The researchers say the rogue apps were available in Google's Play store - and secretly mined bitcoin in the background

'Your phone is running low on battery and it seems to be working harder than usual. Would you ever suspect that it was secretly mining Bitcoin for someone you don't know?' it said.

The firm today revealed it found a piece of mobile malware in Google Play that quietly uses the phone's processing power to create new coins.

'We call it BadLepricon,' they said.

'And yes, that is how the malware authors spelled 'leprechaun'.

'We hope they were going for a clever play on the word 'con.'

The malware comes in the form of a wallpaper app.

Google removed five of these applications after we alerted them to the issue, but it is believed the apps had between 100-500 installs each at the time of removal.

Lookout says bitcoin 'rogue apps' could become commonplace.

'We expect to see more mobile miners come to the foreground,' the firm warned.

The warning is the second over bitcoin apps that can install themselves on Android handsets.

Last month researchers discovered CoinKrypt that focused on coins such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Casinocoin.

The people behind this malware decided to go for these 'low-hanging fruit' coins because you can actually mine more coins with less computing power.

Security firm Lookout today revealed it found a piece of mobile malware in Google Play that quietly uses the phone¿s processing power to create new coins.

However, the researchers say both scams were unlikely to have made hackers much money.

'A phone's computing power doesn't actually result in that many coins,' they said.

'The difficulty for Bitcoin is so tough right now that a recent mining experiment using 600 quadcore servers was only able to generate 0.4 Bitcoins over one year.'

Because of these difficulty levels, miners often don't work alone. Instead, they work in groups, pooling their processing resources.

They collect payment as a percentage of the processing power they contribute.