Title looks horrible or would be waking up your eagerness or willing , the same happened with me when i got the news and then i researched for it for my HiveIans and project hopians .
Google play Store primarly popular because of android users , its a platform for android users as they use it to download necessary and important applications .
In total, the apps carrying the Trojan HiddenAds have been downloaded more than 1.5 crore times. Some of the most downloaded titles that were live at the time of filing this story includes Skate Board - New, Find Hidden Differences, Spot Hidden Differences, Tony Shoot - NEW, and Stacking Guys.
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According to the news this headlines ( news ) came from a very well known Antivirus company named as Avast , according to their Security researchers they have found about 47 applications belonging to the Trojan family HiddenAds and Google took action against 30 of them and removed them . the main or we can say biggest target was targeted users in India and Southeast Asia.
Concept and How they made it a trojan :
The concept of Hackers or we can say greedy developers was they made games and it looks like simple games so many people trusted those gaming applications but inside the gaming application they have added Advertisement ( as many of us seen ads Popping out while playing games ) and inside the ads they have used strategy to steal useful data and information from the users . the most important thing is they made the apps which get their icons hidden after opening resulting in different ads comming after which cannot be skipped .
Official Statement by Avast Security researchers:
Once the user downloads the app, a timer starts within the app. The user is allowed to play the game for a set period of time, after which the timer triggers the hide icon feature of the app,” explained Avast Threat Operations Analyst Jakub Vávra, in a blog post. “Once the icon is hidden, the app starts to display ads throughout the device without needing further actions from the user.”
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Play Store Negligence that Done before :
Comming to July last year again hackers made many applications which can steal information from the users using their apps and the troubleful thing is :
Avast detected apps that were installed a combined 1,30,000 times with the nature of stalking users.
The problem is there are Millions of apps that are made daily and are uploaded on Play store on daily basis and when the Hacking comes inside ads even play protect cant detect those ads because there are thousands of apps supporting ads .
Steps for the Prevention :
The best thing said by analyst of avast is that users before downloading should view all negative reviews and should take a bit of time in reading terms and conditions and privacy and policies as well ( Prevention is Better than Cure ) . The biggest mistake we do is we just do accept and agree all the time without even knowing that the app could steal our data from us .
And most of the time google play can't consider the Orginal app to a fake one, so its better always download or get the app from the original page.