Quote:A study conducted over the course of two years reveals that dangerous apps remain a significant issue of Android, despite Google’s improvements supposed to boost the level of security offered to users.
 
Researchers from Data61 group, part of the University of Sydney and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO), set up an advanced app analysis system that relied on a so-called convolutional neural network to scan apps and determine similarities, including app icons.

Dangerous apps, including here clones that typically attempt to scam users or infect their devices, often use icons that impersonate more popular titles in an attempt to trick people into downloading them.

The research also relied on anti-malware scanning performed with VirusTotal, and included a check of permissions and third-party ad libraries that the flagged apps included in an attempt to do damage on the devices where they are installed.

The results pretty much speak for themselves. Out of the 1 million apps that were inspected, there were nearly 50,000 items that included some kind of similarity to another more popular app in the Play store.

“We were able to find 2,040 potential counterfeits that contain malware in a set of 49,608 apps that showed high similarity to one of the top-10,000 popular apps in Google Play Store,” the study reveals as per TNW. “We also [found] 1,565 potential counterfeits asking for at least five additional dangerous permissions than the original app and 1,407 potential counterfeits having at least five extra third-party advertisement libraries.”