Google Removes 38 adware- Infected Applications from Google Play

Google has pulled 38 applications from its Google Play store that have infested out-of-context ads on Android smartphones. Such apps focused on beauty-related features, according to a research paper; however, they did not serve a legitimate function and were simply intended to show malicious advertising. This is also noted that the fraudulent apps redirected users to "out of context URLs" and made it almost "impossible" for users to uninstall them in certain cases. The research paper claims that more than 20 million downloads have been amassed by these apps.

The findings were published by Bot mitigation company White Opt-in a research paper and have been reported by ZDNet. The research paper's authors claim that the same group of developers developed the all apps on Google Play store.

How did Google Play function with malicious apps? 

The research points out that, in January 2019, the first batch of these apps (21 out of 38) appeared on Google Play and focused on taking selfies or adding filters to photos of users.  Yet those were soon banned from the Google Play store following the detection of their malware like behavior.

"But even with an average time on the Play Store of fewer than three weeks, the apps reached an audience: the average number of installs for the devices we analyzed was 565,833," reads the report. The developers had modified their strategy by September 2019 and released a batch of 15 apps that had a much slower pace of removal.

Two new apps, namely Rose Photo Editor & Selfie Beauty Camera and Pinot Sealife Beauty Camera & Photo Editor were patched in  November 2019 with "much of the fraudulent code," to avoid

detection, the paper said.