Items tagged with Apps
I can no longer scroll through my Facebook or Twitter feed without seeing an image of someone I know who has been digitally aged, or altered in some other way. That's because FaceApp has gone viral again. In case you missed it (impossible at this point), this mobile application lets you apply various filters to your selfies and photos, and the in-thing to do right now is to use the Age filter and post the result. While hugely popular, there are some privacy implications that come with it. It is not just your Facebook friends and family members who are goofing around with FaceApp—celebrity actors, athletes, and musicians are also partaking in the fun. And yes, it is fun (and funny). One...
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Well, this is surprising—a new security report makes the bold claim that "all mobile applications are vulnerable" to one kind of threat or another, and it really does not matter whether you are using Android or iOS. In fact, according to the report, iOS is not only just as insecure as Android, but even more so, if looking at the more critical vulnerabilities that exist. The report was put together by researchers at Positive Technologies, a global provider of enterprise security solutions for vulnerability and compliance management, incident and threat analysis, and application protection (according to the company's About page). According to the report, users downloaded mobile apps over...
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Google can't seem to figure out how to stop nefarious developers from offering apps via Google Play that are filled with malware and adware. In April, word surfaced that apps with ties to a group called DU Group were committing click fraud and amassed over 50 million downloads. A new group of apps with far more downloads with ties to China is now wreaking havoc and allegedly making some Android devices almost unusable. Researchers from mobile security firm Lookout have announced that 238 apps on Google Play with an aggregate of over 440 million downloads have been found to contain the BeiTaAd plugin. That plugin is a strain of adware that can make Android devices incredibly difficult to use once...
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A software development company out of the UK called Collabora has unveiled something that Linux users will be excited about. The software is called SPURV, and it is described as an "experimental containerized Android environment" that is designed to allow Linux users to run Android apps in windows alongside native applications on desktop Linux. In a nutshell, SPURV creates a virtual Android device on the Linux host machine. SPURV has components that allow the Android environment to play audio, connect to networks, and use hardware-accelerated graphics through the underlying Linux system. One key difference between SPURV and other ways of running Android on Linux systems is the support for running...
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Microsoft has announced an update to the revenue sharing deal it has with developers of apps that are offered via the Microsoft Store. The updated Microsoft Store App Developer agreement allows develops to keep more of the revenue their apps generate if certain conditions are met. The new fee structure will put up to 95% of the revenue that apps sold on the store generates into the pocket of the devs. One of the caveats is that to get the 95% revenue split; developers must implement referring traffic URLs with a CID. Sales that result from other methods with urls featuring an OCID, such as when an app is found in a Microsoft Store collection, via Microsoft Store search, or via other Microsoft-owned...
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Privacy is a big issue for users of the social network Facebook. The company has been called out for violating the privacy of users multiple times and faces fines that could be in the billions from the FTC. While Facebook will shutter one of its apps for privacy issues, called Onavo, there are still multiple third-party apps that collect all sorts of highly personal data, and shares that data with Facebook. Late last week a report surfaced that called out several apps that were sharing data on the health and fitness of users without permission. Four of those apps have stopped sending sensitive data, such as the weight of users and information on women's menstrual cycles, to Facebook. Apps noted...
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One of the first things that most people do when they get a new Android device is to log into their Google account. That allows the preinstalled apps to update automatically, among other things. Updates are important because often the update is meant to patch some sort of flaw that makes the app or device unstable or to patch a security hole that leaves devices vulnerable. The problem is that not everyone logs into a Google account on their device. That means apps are left unpatched and Google wants to change that. Google is sending out messages to developers who preload apps on devices letting the devs know that it would be testing a feature that allows the apps to update even if the user fails...
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Google still has a massive malware problem within the Google Play store. In November, we learned that apps from Cheetah Mobile had been part of a massive click fraud scheme that saw apps from it and Kika Tech stealing millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks. The apps had reportedly been downloaded around 2 billion times in total. A malware-infected QR Reader app had racked up 500,000 downloads in March of last year before being removed from the store. Now Google has reportedly removed another 85 apps from Google Play because they were malware laden. The batch of 85 apps wasn't removed from the Google Play store until analysts with Trend Micro discovered that the apps had malware inside....
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Reports are making the rounds that some Samsung Galaxy smartphone owners who are fed up with Facebook after privacy blunders that leaked pictures and its history of sharing data without permission can't uninstall the app on their device. Some Galaxy S8 owners are unable to delete the Facebook app completely from their devices; all owners can do is select an option to disable the app. Owners fear that by disabling the app rather than uninstalling it, Facebook might still be able to track them and share their data without permission. There is a movement trying to get people to delete Facebook in protest of its privacy and security issues. A Facebook spokesperson told Bloomberg that disabling...
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It's not a good time to be an Android user who frequents the Google Play Store for apps. Just over the last few weeks, malware-laden apps that had been downloaded over half a million times were found on the Play Store. Apps from Cheetah Mobile were also found to be committing click fraud and running down the batteries inside user devices. Reports are now surfacing that Google has now pulled another batch of 22 apps from the Google Play Store that had been downloaded over 2 million times cumulatively. The newest apps discovered to be malicious had a so-called "device-draining backdoor" that allowed them to download files from a server controlled by the attacker. The most disturbing part is...
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Android users who think the apps they download on the Google Play store are safe and secure would be wrong in many cases. Malware and other fraudulent apps often run rampant within the Google Play Store. Now a new report claims that seven apps from Cheetah Mobile and one from Kika Tech that have a combined 2 billion downloads via Google Play are part of a massive ad fraud scheme. The two companies are related; Kika Tech reportedly had a significant investment from Cheetah in 2016. The ad fraud scheme was outed by research firm Kochava, and according to the researchers, these fraudulent apps could have stolen millions of dollars. Cheetah and Kika combined claim they have 700 million active users...
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The app market for just about every platform out there is rife with developers who use nefarious techniques to trick users into giving them access to their valuable personal data. You might expect this to be a problem with third-party app stores for Android devices, but some might be surprised to learn that Apple is having an issue with nefarious developers and apps offered for download on the highly-guarded Mac App Store. The tip-off that something nefarious might be going on with apps for your Mac comes when the app asks for access to the home directory in macOS. At least a handful of apps available for Mac users that ask for that permission are using that access to steal user data such...
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Is your smartphone secretly recording your screen activity? It turns out that conspiracy theorists may have some justification for their concern. Computer scientists from Northeastern University determined that some apps do violate a user’s privacy by quietly capturing pictures, videos, and recorded audio. According to the Northeastern University scientists, their research was the “first large-scale empirical study of media permissions and leaks from Android apps, covering 17,260 apps from Google Play, App China, Mi.com, and Anzhi.” The researchers worked with ten Android devices and an automated program to use the apps and determine whether any media files were sent to...
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Google is rolling out something akin to DRM for Android APKs as a way to verify that apps originated from the Play Store. Rogue apps that are malware-ridden are running rampant these days, so this is just an extra layer of security that Google is implementing to help safeguard Android users from attacks. The new DRM has a single goal, and that is to allow users to be certain that an app they are using is genuine and hasn't been tampered with. The number of apps that have been found with malware inside or to be outright fake is ever growing in the Android realm. Late last year it was found that a fake WhatsApp app had racked up over a million downloads. To be clear, Google isn’t billing...
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