Google Blocked 700,000 Malicious Apps From Play Store in 2017

Google blocked nearly 700,000 Malicious Apps in 2017 alone that violated Google Play Store policies and Malvertising Apps which silently Performing malicious activities on users Android Device.

Removed apps are  70% more than the apps taken down in 2016 that clearly indicate that Cyber criminals are distributing many malicious android applications day by day and increase the android based attacking vectors rapidly.

In this case, 99 % of removed abusive Andoird applications were identified and blocked before anyone could install them on their Android mobile.

Total number of Google play store application estimated at 2.6 million in December 2016 and 3.5 Million in 2017 December

Also Read: Penetration Testing Android Application Checklist

Google is always working hard to improvements in their ability to detect abuse such as impersonation, inappropriate content, or malware.

Accoirdig to Google, We’ve also developed new detection models and techniques that can identify repeat offenders and abusive developer networks at scale. This resulted in taking down of 100,000 bad developers in 2017, and made it more difficult for bad actors to create new accounts and attempt to publish yet another set of bad apps.

Google play store blocked those  700,000 apps are mainly based on one of the following categories.

• Copycats
• Inappropriate content
• Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs)

Google Blocked Copycats

These category applications are violating the Google play store policy by impersonating the other famous legitimate applications that make to get a lot more search traffic for the specific keyword which redirects users to download the impersonate malicious applications.

In this case,  In 2017, Google took down more than a quarter of a million of impersonating apps from Google play store.

Inappropriate content

Another Major category inappropriate contents such as pornography, extreme violence, hate, and illegal activities. Google took down tens of thousands of apps with inappropriate content in last year.

Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs)

PHAs based applications categories as extremely harmful for android users which Performing malicious activities that harm to users devices such as MS fraud, act as trojans, or phishing user’s information.