A recent study found more than 2,000 malicious applications on the Google Play Store. Some of them are even well-known applications with high download numbers.
A two-year research found that there were 2,040 applications on the Google Play Store that were dangerous in several ways. There are a number of applications that require suspicious permissions, while others are direct malware.
The study was conducted by the University of Sydney and Data61 from CSIRO. This research includes about 1 million applications on Google Play and finds a large number of fake applications without malware, but still needs permission to access data that does not have business with them.
As mentioned above, some malicious applications are popular applications. Some of them are games called Hill Climb Racing or Temple Run.
To process 1 million applications, the researchers used neural networks and machine learning. This algorithm is set to search for the same text description and icons that are visually similar to the 10,000 most popular applications on the App Store.
This algorithm returns 49,608 potential threats. Using VirusTotal, around 7,246 applications are marked as dangerous and 2,040 of them are fake and high-risk applications. In addition, 1,565 requested at least five sensitive permits and 1,407 to embed third-party ad libraries.
Responding to this, Google claimed to have deleted the application that had been studied. The Google team also reported that the number of rejected application shipments had increased by more than 55 percent compared to last year and application suspension had increased to 66 percent.
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