Security News > 2022 > November > Oh, look: More malware in the Google Play store

In brief A quartet of malware-laden Android apps from a single developer have been caught with malicious code more than once, yet the infected apps remain on Google Play and have collectively been downloaded more than one million times.

Google Play has a history of hosting malicious apps, with perhaps one of the most egregious cases coming to light this past July when 60 apps installed by more than 3.3 million users were taken down due to malware.

This isn't even the first time the HiddenAds Trojan was found on Google Play: It was spotted on the store in 2020, while in 2021 a popular barcode scanning app installed on over 10 million devices was updated to add HiddenAds.

Google has also been accused of failing to police malware pre-loaded onto cheap Android devices, which more than 50 advocacy groups called the company out for in 2020.

Just under half the mobile devices used by US civil servants at all levels of government are running out-of-date OSes, according to a report examining telemetry from more than 200 million devices.

Cybercriminals bent on accessing government devices are turning away from malware and toward simple credential harvesting, meaning those outdated OSes might not be to blame for threat actors gaining a foothold in US government agencies.

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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/11/07/in_brief_security/