Security News > 2023 > June > Over 60,000 Android apps secretly installed adware for past six months
Over 60,000 Android apps disguised as legitimate applications have been quietly installing adware on mobile devices while remaining undetected for the past six months.
The malicious apps are not hosted on Google Play but on third-party websites in Google Search that push APKs, Android packages that allow you to manually install mobile apps.
The download sites are purposely created to distribute the malicious Android apps as an APK that, when installed, infect the Android devices with adware.
When launched, the app will reach out to the attackers' servers and retrieve advertisement URLs to be displayed in the mobile browser or as a full-screen WebView ad. While the malicious apps are currently only used to display advertisements, the researchers warn that the threat actors could easily swap out the adware URLs for more malicious websites.
Just this past week, researchers from Dr. Web and CloudSEK discovered a malicious spyware SDK installed over 400 million times on Android devices from apps on Google Play.
While Google Play still has its share of malicious apps, installing your Android apps from the official Android store is far safer.