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Google Play, Google's Android app store, hosted more than 205 malicious apps just in July and was downloaded more than 32 million times last month.
The bulk of the malware, with 188 fine-grained applications, contains hidden advertisements, representing up to 19.2 million installations.
Other offending applications fall into the category of subscription fraud, ad fraud, counterfeit applications, counterfeit antivirus, adware and integrated backdoor software.
This information corresponds to data collected by Lucas Stefanco, software researcher at ESET.
Although the safety researcher did not provide complete data, he pointed out how much damage could be hidden in applications supposed to be safely downloaded.
Lucas explained that there are three fraudulent applications per subscription only, but that they have received one-third of all downloads with 12 million installations.
Although the hidden ads may not look very bad, Stefano says that this race is very strong.
"At startup, these apps hide their icons in the home screen.These apps do not have features other than full screen ads."
Lucas Stefano examines malicious activity on the Google Play Store monthly, explaining that these apps and numbers are based on research, blogs, reports and Twitter published in July 2019 by the "infosec" community.
Google seems to be losing the battle against Android malware in its store, even though Google Play Protect has provided it.
In 2018, the company put in place a series of new rules to protect users against new methods of abuse, discovered and deleted more quickly malware developers and prevented a greater number of malicious users. Malicious apps to access Google Play.
However, applications badociated with malware and fraudulent applications are not detected by established procedures, which increases the burden on users.
A study conducted by the University of Sydney and the Commonwealth research and science industry a few weeks ago concluded that the Android store was teeming with suspicious applications.
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