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Google Play Apps with 1.5 Million Downloads Drained Batteries and Slowed Devices

posted by martyb on Sunday September 01 2019, @05:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the caveat-emptor dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Google Play apps with 1.5 million downloads drained batteries and slowed devices

The apps—a notepad app called "Idea Note: OCR Text Scanner, GTD, Color Notes" and a fitness app with the title "Beauty Fitness: daily workout, best HIIT coach"—carried out the stealthy form of fraud for almost a year until it was discovered by researchers at security firm Symantec. Google removed them from Play after receiving a private report.

The newly discovered tactic positioned advertisements in places that weren't visible to end users—specifically in messages displayed in the nether regions of an infected phone's notification drawer. When a user clicked on the notification, Android's Toast class opened the ad—but in a way that wasn't visible to the user. The technique worked by opening a Canvas and using the translate() and dispatchDraw() methods to position the ads beyond the viewable screen area of the infected device. The result: the app could report a revenue-generating ad click even though users saw nothing.

Another way the apps concealed the ad-clicking was through the use of so-called packers. By changing the entire structure and flow of an APK, such packers can obfuscate the true behavior of an Android app. That makes it hard for Google scanners to detect malicious apps during any vetting processes.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday September 01 2019, @10:30PM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 01 2019, @10:30PM (#888624) Journal

    The lack of even the most basic note taking app, todo list, or reminders facility running locally is a huge hole in terms of out-of-the-box usability. You should not be required to visit the mother ship for such basic functions.

    By this measure alone**, an Android is not absolutely useless.
    Granted, it may make it useless (or crippled) for most of the people. Yet, for those that can code and install their own app...

    These are basic tools that should run locally, store their data locally, and screw Google and their anal surveillance probes.

    Mmmmm, that's an idea. An one-off $2-$5 price for such an application may define a good enough market segment.

    ** there is still the matter of getting rid of those Google apps weaved in the Android experience.

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday September 02 2019, @02:45AM

    by bart9h (767) on Monday September 02 2019, @02:45AM (#888705)

    there is still the matter of getting rid of those Google apps weaved in the Android experience.

    The full Android experience without Google Apps [microg.org]

    also, F-Droid [f-droid.org]