We already reported that malware managed to infect the Google Play Store. More problematic applications have made is past the detection systems of the Play Store.
These infected applications have infected about 9 million Android users, according to the latest reports coming from analyst Trend Micro. Google eventually removed 85 apps from the store as a result.
These apps which were mostly TV and video players and controllers would show full-screen ads until they crashed.
Developers who are behind such apps have racked up ad impressions, and they took advantage of these.
Despite the negative reviews, apps still made it in the store
The batch of 85 applications that were eliminated by Google included the Easy Universal TV Remote.
This app had a high proportion of negative reviews, but it also has managed to somehow get past Google’s security filters, which is definitely a bad sign.
Google claimed a while ago that they had halved the quantity of Android malware in its very first Android Ecosystem Security Transparency Report that has been published in back in November.
But unfortunately, it seems that the scale of the ecosystem still means trouble for many.
By Google’s calculations, only 0.09% of devices accessing the Store had malware on board – but that’s still 1.8 million phones.
This particular batch of applications was hard for users to miss because there’s still some adware that keeps generating false impressions in the background.
Flappy Bird clone and more fake apps
Lately, it seems that there’s also more spyware which keeps creeping into this digital marketplace.
Trend Micro has recently spotted a Flappy Bird on the Play Store among other counterfeit apps.
These all had the newly discovered ANDROIDOS_MOBSTSPY spyware built in.
Flappy Birr Dog, Flappy Bird, HZPermis Pro Arabe, Win7imulator, Win7Launcher, and FlashLight – these are all apps that have been spotted in the store and included the same malware dubbed the MobSTSPY malware.
The infected applications can share private data such as SMS conversations, call logs, clipboard data, and also GPS data which is pretty scary.
After finishing Theatrical Journalism at the Faculty of Theatre and Television in Cluj-Napoca, Rada reviewed movies, books, theatre pieces and she also wrote articles from the IT niche as a content editor for software producers. At the moment, she is working with various online advertising firms.
