Security News
Google has removed an Android VPN program from the Google Play store after researchers notified it of a critical vulnerability. VPNpro, a company that reviews and advises on VPN products, warned in February of a vulnerability in the product that could cause a man in the middle attack, enabling an intruder to insert themselves between the user and the VPN service.
Preying on public fears, the ongoing coronavirus outbreak is proving to be a goldmine of opportunity for attackers to stage a variety of malware attacks, phishing campaigns, and create scam sites and malicious tracker apps. Now in a fresh twist, third-party Android app developers too have begun to take advantage of the situation to use coronavirus-related keywords in their app names, descriptions, or in the package names so as to drop malware, perpetrate financial theft and rank higher in Google Play Store searches related to the topic.
More than 50 Android apps on the Google Play Store-most of which were designed for kids and had racked up almost 1 million downloads between them-have been caught using a new trick to secretly click on ads without the knowledge of smartphone users. While the offending apps have been removed from Google Play, the find by Check Point Research is the latest in an avalanche of ad fraud schemes that have plagued the app storefront in recent years, with malware posing as optimizer and utility apps to perform phony clicks on ads.
Researchers have identified eight malicious Android apps in the official Google Play marketplace distributing a new malware family. The comments under the Google Play download pages for these specific eight apps described the apps acting suspiciously, serving as red flags for potential downloaders.
Google has banned nearly 600 Android apps from the Play Store for bombarding users with disruptive ads and violating its advertising guidelines. Back in 2018, Cheetah Mobile was accused of turning smartphones into stealthy click farms to engage in ad fraud, leading Google to ban a bunch of its apps from the Play Store.
Google has banned nearly 600 Android apps from the Play Store for bombarding users with disruptive ads and violating its advertising guidelines. Back in 2018, Cheetah Mobile was accused of turning smartphones into stealthy click farms to engage in ad fraud, leading Google to ban a bunch of its apps from the Play Store.
On Thursday Google confirmed it has removed nearly 600 Android apps from the Google Play Store and banned them from its ad services for violating its policies on disruptive advertising and interstitials. Such purges have become a regular occurrence on platforms where third-party developers are afforded some freedom, like Google Play, the Chrome Web Store, and even the iOS App Store.
Some of the efforts Google has made over the past few years to bolster the security of Android app users as well as the mobile apps available on its Google Play store are starting to work, according to the tech giant. "Over the last few years we've made the trust and safety of Google Play a top priority, and have continued our investments and improvements in our abuse detection systems, policies, and teams to fight against bad apps and malicious actors," Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play and Android App Safety, wrote in a blog post this week.
Researchers from VPN Pro recently discovered the bad apps when looking into the dangerous permissions that popular free antivirus apps request. As the researchers kept digging into the excessive, unnecessary, dangerous permissions these apps ask for, the name Hi Security popped up again.
Google has removed roughly 1,700 unique applications from its Google Play app store that were part of a family of potentially unwanted programs. Over time, the developers of the applications have focused on finding new cloaking and obfuscation techniques to evade Google Play Store's new policies and Play Protect's evolving defenses and remain undetected.