More Android app malware has been found and removed from the Google Play Store, this time in the form of an app called Barcode Scanner. Researchers found that the app seemed to be legitimate at one time and had accumulated some 10 million installations before the sketchy code was added, turning…
Hackers and bad actors get increasingly creative when it comes to trying to slip nefarious apps past the defenses of the Google Play Store, something we covered with increasingly regularity over the course of 2020 — a year in which we saw one example after another of batches of sketchy Android apps taking advantage of users and quickly getting booted from Google’s app store. Examples included this batch of 24 Android apps, covering everything from weather to calendar and camera functionality, some of which were malware-laden and requested sketchy permissions. Google kicked them out of the store, but not before they’d racked up some 382 million downloads. Same with this group of Android apps that could have stolen users’ Facebook login data, which racked up about 470,000 downloads. Here we are now, meanwhile, in 2021, and the Android app malware machine is cranking back up into high gear — with one particularly sketchy Android app recently identified and kicked out of the Play Store after racking up some 10 million installs.
