You’re playing with fire if you download Android apps from this sketchy app store

$%name You’re playing with fire if you download Android apps from this sketchy app store by Authcom, Nova Scotia\s Internet and Computing Solutions Provider in Kentville, Annapolis Valley$

Google’s Play Store has come under fire in recent weeks over reports that keep stacking up about malicious apps that have snuck past the security checks of Google’s app marketplace only to be identified later and summarily booted from the Play Store — but not before amassing what are in many cases millions of downloads and no doubt causing significant damage behind the scenes. Still, there are far sketchier places where users are downloading Android apps, and a new report identifies what may be the most dangerous yet.

RiskIQ has published its 2019 Mobile App Threat Landscape report, which pegs 9Game.com — a mobile app store offering free Android game — as the most dangerous such store, and, in fact, the home of the most malicious apps for all of 2019. According to the report, there were almost 62,000 new malicious apps uploaded to the store in 2019, putting 9Game at the top of the list of stores with the most new malicious apps but also at the top of the overall list of stores with the most sketchy apps in total. There are also hundreds of other less-than-reputable app stores like this one, the report warns, which “represent a murky mobile underworld that exists outside of the relative safety of reputable stores. With many of these apps found in stores hosted in countries known for cybercrime, such as China, or outside of stores altogether on the open web (often referred to as feral apps), it’s no wonder CISOs can’t keep tabs on them.”

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You’re playing with fire if you download Android apps from this sketchy app store originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 at 10:33:24 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.