Google pulls 13 malware apps from the Play Store that have been installed over 500,000 times

Google was quick to pull 13 malware-ridden apps from the Play Store. But not before these apps have been downloaded by at least 500,000 users, at least according to a researcher who reported how these malicious apps got into the store. The 13 Android apps included car and truck driving simulations with a couple getting into the store’s trending section even. The apps don’t have really work and crash every time they were launched but these hid in the phones to make it easier to install malware. According to ESET security researcher Lukas Stefanko, these apps have been downloaded over 560,000 times with a single developer named Luiz Pinto being credited for making them. Stefanko details in a series of tweets how these apps operate and that these would ask to install an additional APK, which you can see in action in this link.

However, as NDTV Gadgets points out, this isn’t the first time malicious apps have showed up in the Play Store. There was an auto-clicking adware last year called Judy found in 41 apps and affected between 8.5 and 36.5 million Android devices. There was also a botnet malware called FalseGuide that infected millions of Android devices via Google Play.