Google Removes 85 Adware Apps That Were Installed By Millions of Users (zdnet.com)

Google has removed 85 Android apps from the official Play Store that security researchers from Trend Micro deemed to contain a common strain of adware. "The 85 apps had been downloaded over nine million times, and one app, in particular, named 'Easy Universal TV Remote,' was downloaded over five million times," reports ZDNet. From the report: While the apps were uploaded on the Play Store from different developer accounts and were signed by different digital certificates, they exhibited similar behaviors and shared the same code, researchers said in a report published today. But besides similarities in their source code, the apps were also visually identical, and were all of the same types, being either games or apps that let users play videos or control their TVs remotely.

The first time users ran any of the apps, they would proceed to show fullscreen ads in different steps, asking and reasking users to press various buttons to continue. If the user was persistent and stayed with the app until it reached a menu page, every menu button push would trigger yet another fullscreen ad, over and over again until the app would suddenly crash, hiding its original app icon. But despite the crash, unbeknownst to the user, the app would continue to run in the phone's background, showing new fullscreen ads ever 15 or 30 minutes, generating profits for the fraudsters until users either removed the apps or reset devices to factory settings as a last resort. You can view a list of the 85 adware apps via this PDF file.

Comments

Weren't the 'stores' supposed to protect us?

[WoodstockJeff]

Doesn't seem to be working very well...

Re:Weren't the 'stores' supposed to protect us?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google Play store is a dumping ground for all sorts of garbage - there is no hurdles to getting apps listed and no process to review apps for quality so this sort of thing becomes inevitable.

People complain about the Apple 'walled garden' and the rules you have to play by to get your apps in the iOS store, but it does a much better job of preventing these sorts of apps, and the walled garden prevents them from infecting/digesting and pimping out your data.

Re:Weren't the 'stores' supposed to protect us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Walled garden does nothing of the sort. The review process only screens out super obvious stuff like this... which could have been solved by simply uninstalling the app.

There have been numerous white/grey hat examples that show that Apple has no idea what is running underneath the hood of each app. Remember the flashlight that tethers? Banned only when it got popular enough to warrant attention, just like this.

Re:Weren't the 'stores' supposed to protect us?

[Luthair]

https://us.norton.com/internet...

Re:Weren't the 'stores' supposed to protect us?

[DaMattster]

Doesn't seem to be working very well...

Google's Play Protect is an epic failure!

Re:Weren't the 'stores' supposed to protect us?

[DrXym]

They are protecting you to an extent. The apps were identified and removed from the store, and Google has the means to remotely remove them from devices.

But is the store a walled garden where every line of code is reviewed and approved? No. The store might be proactive about identifying and removing threats, but it is not a substitute for exercising common sense.

As an aside, this threat was identified by Trend Micro who are IMO, even worse than some of the malware they claim to protect from. It's obviously in their interest to big up threats even if in this case it's little more than nuisance software. Their antivirus products for the PC are just garbage, slowing down internet access and firing false positives. Can't even uninstall or disable the thing because its corporate policy.

How is it even possible?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Why isn't there a hot key to override any misbehaving app and give control back to the user, to launch task killer?

Re:How is it even possible?

[squiggleslash]

If it's not a background app, then yes, there's a button to bring up a task manager on every Android phone, the boxy on. Good Android phones have this as one of three off screen buttons, shitty Android phones cost three times as much and have these on screen but hidden in full screen mode - you have to swipe from the side to get the buttons to appear.

Never buy a phone with on screen buttons.

Anywho, for background tasks you need to go to Settings -> Apps -> Whatever app it is, and hit Force Stop. The same screen also has an Uninstall button to kill the process permanently.

So yes, either way, Android does have relatively easy to find tools to kill misbehaving processes.

Again, never buy an Android phone with on screen buttons.

Re:How is it even possible?

[AHuxley]

The same way police, mil and govs get full access to any user they find in the wild.

Re:How is it even possible?

[hankwang]

My phone has off-screen touch-sensitive buttons. They would trigger all the time if my finger accidentally slid off-screen, so I disabled them. The on-screen soft buttons are smarter and trigger not on slide-ins, only on taps. The occasional extra step to make them visible in a full screen app really doesn't bother me.

Re:How is it even possible?

[dargaud]

Anywho, for background tasks you need to go to Settings -> Apps -> Whatever app it is, and hit Force Stop. The same screen also has an Uninstall button to kill the process permanently

Many apps have a disabled uninstall button. Only way to deal with them is revoke all their permissions (but they'll still be running). That sucks.

Re:How is it even possible?

[bigtech]

Say what? Maybe you're talking about the apps that are built into a phone's ROM, but to the best of my knowledge, there's no way to disable an uninstall button in Android.

Re:How is it even possible?

[dargaud]

Whether they are system apps or add-on apps from the phone vendor or even add-on apps from the phone company, there are plenty. I just checked and the following can't be uninstalled: Android accessibility Suite, Apps Lock, Calendar, Camera, Carrier Services, Clock, Cloud Print (why the fuck would I need that ?), Contacts, Drive, Duo, eMail, Facebook, File Manager, Files, FM Radio, Freebox, etc, etc...

Some seem essential (calendar...) until you can see plenty of preferable alternatives on the Play Store.

A couple things

[bobstreo]

If you install an app and get full screen ads, just uninstall it. Or read more than 1 review to see if it's worth installing. If you encounter full screen ads, just hit the home button to get back to your home screen.

Install a firewall on your android device.

There are plenty of free firewalls to choose from. You can control various types of access and deny access to either specific sites or accesses to sites by app or even global rules.

You'd be scared/amazed to see what is trying to access external sites on the Internet. If nothing else, you will reduce your data use by blocking acceses from your device.

For instance, I really don't have any idea why my flashlight app would be accessing anything other than the camera led. I see it trying to phone home, and block it permanently.

I'd like for someone (else) to create a bunch of rules for me to use so my apps never try to talk to bookface or other trackers.

Re:A couple things

[nukenerd]

If you install an app and get full screen ads, just uninstall it.

And how would you necessarily know which app was doing it?

We need someone to protect us from the stores.

[ron_ivi]

A far bigger privacy concern is Google's spyware itself. I hope the phone vendors some day get sick of google and market phones with unlocked bootloaders so you can install Debian, Red Hat, or whatever OS you want on them.

Re:We need someone to protect us from the stores.

[nukenerd]

A far bigger privacy concern is Google's spyware itself.

The story here is making your device unusable by turning it into a billboard. Not much to do with privacy. We know privacy is another concern , but don't hijack this thread because of it.

Why Do these Ads Work?

[nukenerd]

What I don't get is why would such annoying behaviour make anyone want to buy the crap being advertised? Or why anyone would think it would sell more of the crap. My Pavlov dog-like reaction would to recoil from what was being shoved in my face and fucking up my usage.

That's not what adware means, noobs

[drinkypoo]

Adware already has a meaning. It's software which presents ads in exchange for not costing money, and you may be able to remove the ads by paying a fee. It does NOT mean apps which only show you ads. Android software is dominated by actual adware, and this seems a deliberate attempt to obfuscate that fact.

Re:That's not what adware means, noobs

[drinkypoo]

Adware is an older term. It refers to the sneaky Windows crap we had special malware scanners for back in the early oughts.

We had adware in the current sense back then, too.

Use our Store!

[DarkRookie2]

Stuff like this wont happen. We promised.

Re:Daily Reminder: Android is shit!

[Anonymous Coward]

but a step up from iPhone.

who?

[sad_]

i looked at the list and it's just a bunch of rubbish apps, who installs these idiotic things?
aparently 100.000's of people looking at the download count.
nobody learned a thing as people just keep installing whatever on their devices.