Rotten apps do slip through on occasion, but the company is fairly quick at removing anything problematic. (Apple's App Store isn't immune from this issue, but it's much less severe.) Google carefully vets the products in Play to make sure they're safe. Don't want this drama on your phone? The key to protecting yourself is staying away from sketchy app stores, and only downloading software from Google Play.Īndroid's open-source status makes it easily accessible to developers, but also leaves the door open for malicious apps. Once downloaded, these apps may even seem normal (if a little janky) but they can spread ransomware or types of malware that exploit system vulnerabilities to steal data or take over a whole device.
It's easy for a hacker to dress software up to look novel, benign, or like the dopplegänger of a mainstream product, and then plant it in third-party app stores for careless browsers to find. Specifically, an app that people downloaded outside the comfortable confines of the Google Play Store.įor criminals, the malicious Android app business is booming. Called "Gooligan," it got into those devices the way so many of these large-scale Android attacks do: through an app. This week, researchers revealed that a strain of malware hit at least 1.3 million Android phones, stealing user data as part of a scheme to boost ad revenue.
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