Google Play Store Is Main Distributor of Malicious Apps, Study Reveals

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Researchers found 67 percent of malicious app installs were via Google's official Android app store.

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(Photo: Getty Images)

Visiting official app stores is meant to offer consumers a guarantee that what they are buying and downloading is safe. However, it turns out that's not always the case on Google's Play Store for Android apps.

As ZDNet reports, a recent academic study carried out in collaboration with the NortonLifelock Research Group and IMDEA Software Institute, reveals that the official Play Store is a primary source of malicious and unwanted apps.

 
The study found that 87 percent of all app installs emanated from the Play Store, but 67 percent of malicious app installs also originated from Google's store. That isn't to say the Play Store is lacking in security to stop malicious apps, but the sheer size and popularity of Google's store means any that slip through the cracks are going to reach a very wide audience.

Below is a table taken from the study (available to download as a PDF) showing a breakdown of app distribution sources along with the percentage of unwanted app installs per source:

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Table sourced from How Did That Get In My Phone? Unwanted App Distribution on Android Devices academic study

As the study explains, "At the core of our measurements are reputation logs that, over the four-month period between June and September 2019, capture the presence in 12M Android devices of 7.9M apps (34M APKs) and the who-installs-who relationship between apps." That data was provided by NortonLifeLock in the form of telemetry data.

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