500+ Google Play Apps Hit by Ad-Related Malware
More than 500 "invasive" Android apps have been updated or removed from Google Play later researchers discovered they could accept been used to spy on users through a malicious advertizement software development kit (SDK).
The ad SDK came from a Chinese company chosen Igexin, and "apps containing the affected SDK were downloaded over 100 million times across the Android ecosystem," according to researchers with Lookout's Security Intelligence team, who alerted Google about it.
An app called LuckyCash and Meitu's SelfieCity were among the infected apps, but they no longer apply the malicious Igexin advertizement SDK, Scout said.
Developers of many of the affected apps were "likely… not enlightened of the personal information that could be exfiltrated from their customers' devices every bit a outcome of embedding Igexin'south ad SDK," Sentry said.
Discovering these malicious qualities "required deep analysis of the apps' and ad SDK's behavior," they wrote. "Not only is the functionality non immediately obvious, it could be contradistinct at any fourth dimension on the remote server."
Lookout has not revealed the names of any other affected apps but said the listing includes a popular game targeted at teens that received between 50 million to 100 one thousand thousand downloads; a weather app and photo-editing app, each with at to the lowest degree one million downloads; and an internet radio app with at least 500,000 downloads. The list also includes unnamed educational, health and fitness, travel, emoji, and home video camera apps.
"While non all of these applications have been confirmed to download the malicious spying capability, Igexin could have introduced that functionality at their convenience," Lookout'due south Security Intelligence team wrote. They added that "information technology is condign increasingly mutual for innovative malware authors to endeavour to evade detection past submitting innocuous apps to trusted app stores, then at a later time, downloading malicious code from a remote server."
Lookout researchers as well recently identified more than 1,000 spyware-infested apps capable of recording audio and snooping on telephone call logs, contacts, and more. The spyware in question, chosen SonicSpy, showed upward in Google Play via three messaging apps: Hulk Messenger, Troy Chat, and Soniac, which accept since been removed. The remainder appeared on third-party Android app stores.
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Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/17137/500-google-play-apps-hit-by-ad-related-malware
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