Google desperately needs to curb the spread of Android malware. In September alone, researchers uncovered a total of 172 infected apps on the Play Store. The worst part? These apps had racked up over 335 million installs by the time they were detected by security experts.
Adware accounted for a staggering 300,600,000 installs, according to data complied by ESET malware researcher Lukas Stefanko. Other types of malware found on Play included subscription spam, hidden ads, and SMS premium subscription software. Interestingly, while there were 57 instances of software with hidden ads, they made up less than 5 percent of all installs.
The Following Are List Of Malicious Apps
It’s worth noting that Stefanko’s data merely indicates the amount of installs the apps had accumulated at the time they were flagged by security researchers. It remains unclear exactly how many times the apps were downloaded over the past month, but the overall amount of installs is the bigger cause of concern.
On the bright side, most of the harmful software appears to have been purged by Google. “If not all of these apps, then definitely most of them are not available on Google Play anymore,” Stefanko told TNW.
Stefanko monitors malicious activity on the Play Store monthly. As he explained to TNW back in July, “All these apps and numbers are based on research, blogs, reports, and tweets published […] by the infosec community.” There is need to be very careful while downloading apps from the play store.
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