13 applications from the Play Store have been removed. The reason for the removal of the application was malware detection. Google itself eliminated the apps from the Play Store. All the apps together had downloads more than 5,60,000 from the Play Store on the Android devices. The report was revealed by ESET Security researcher, Lukas Stefanko. The report also said that two of the games from the removed applications were trending on the Play Store.
Google removes 13 malware apps from Play store
The List of the applications removed
- Truck Cargo Simulator
- Extreme Car Driving
- City Traffic Moto Racing
- Moto Cross Extreme
- Hyper Car Driver Simulator
- Extreme Car Driving
- Firefighter – Fire Truck Simulator
- Car Driving Simulator
- Extreme Sport Car Driving
- SUV 4×4 Driving Simulator
- Luxury Car Parking Simulator
- Luxury Cars SUV Track
- SUV City Climb Parking
Now, the most interesting part is that all the 13 games were under a single developer named ‘Luiz O Pinto’. The apps did not had any authentic installation and also requested users to install another additional app naming ‘Game Center’ which when installed, hid itself and displayed irritating advertisements when device was unlocked. The researcher also posted a video on twitter which demonstrated about how these apps worked.
The tweet said,
“Don’t install these apps from Google Play – it’s malware.
Details:
-13 apps
-all together 560,000+ installs
-after launch, hide itself icon
-downloads additional APK and makes user install it (unavailable now)
-2 apps are #Trending
-no legitimate functionality
-reported”
In the beginning of 2018, Google claimed in a blog that it has removed 7,00,000+ apps from the Play Store that violated the Google Play’s Terms & Conditions in 2017. Google also has removed more than 1,00,000 developers from the Play Store that developed bad applications and has eliminated over a quarter million apps which imitated other renowned or trending apps.
There are many developers who are able to develop such apps which are capable to monitor the location of users and could also look into the essential details of the user such as banking credentials and private photographs in the mobile gallery. Last month, research at Cisco Talos revealed Android malware application ‘GPlayed’ which used similar icon as Google play store and was able to monitor the privacy of the user. Its malware used the label ‘Google Play MarketPlace’ which made the Trojan undetectable by the users.
Still, Google is up to remove more developers who are spreading the malware to the users through their applications. Google has already removed many applications and now is going to embrace its security up against the malware apps developers.
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