Google: removed 500 apps from the Play Store

The security company Lookout has discovered at least 500 applications Android devices that were running through the Google Play Store and featured Igexin, a software development kit. The SDK allowed fraudsters to develop malware to spy on users.

Lookout explains that these apps, whose names did not reveal, exceeded 100 millions of downloads in the Google Play Store and were among the most popular categories, such as adolescent games, weather apps, Internet radios, photo editors, travel applications and emoji.

Google seems to have already removed these apps from the Play Store, which means that there is no longer any risk (from this software). Those who have installed apps that seem suspicious should scan their devices with some reliable security software.

Using an SDK to serve malicious applications on Android devices is a new tactic that allows malicious developers to develop malware on phones and tablets using "clean applications."

Lookout reports that the Igexin SDK provides spy capabilities and that developers may not have known it.

"It is possible that many application developers were unaware that their application was leaking personal information from their clients' devices as a result of the integration of the Igexin Ad SDK. It took an in-depth analysis of the behavior of applications and the SDK by our researchers to make this discovery. "The functionality is not only obvious, but can be modified at any time by a remote server," say Lookout researchers.