Security News
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.
Watch out! If you have any of the below-mentioned file managers and photography apps installed on your Android phone-even if downloaded from the official Google Store store-you have been hacked and being tracked. These newly detected malicious Android apps are Camero, FileCrypt, and callCam that are believed to be linked to Sidewinder APT, a sophisticated hacking group specialized in cyber espionage attacks.
Labeled "StrandHogg," the vulnerability discovered by the mobile security vendor Promon could give hackers access to users' photos, contacts, phone logs, and more.
The Russian ‘Sandworm’ hacking group has been caught repeatedly uploading fake and modified Android apps to Google’s Play Store.
Adtech firm also sent 12k phishing warnings to users of its services Google has said it fired off 12,000 warnings to unlucky users of its GMail, Drive and YouTube services telling them that...
Check Point researchers found that hundreds of marquee Android mobile apps still contain vulnerabilities that allow remote code executive even if users update.