Cyber-Risks Hiding Inside Mobile App Stores

guest · Jun 23, 2019

Cyber-Risks Hiding Inside Mobile App Stores
June 21, 2019
https://www.darkreading.com/mobile/cyber-risks-hiding-inside-mobile-app-stores/d/d-id/1335031

Mobile devices – pervasive in the workplace, heavily used, and often unregulated – present a wealth of opportunity to cybercriminals aiming to access employees' sensitive information.

The mobile threat landscape is always shifting, says Jordan Herman, researcher at RiskIQ, which recently published its "Mobile Threat Landscape Q1 2019" report. Researchers scanned more than 120 app stores and nearly 2 billion resources to detect mobile apps in the wild. In the past four quarters, RiskIQ has categorized 8 million mobile apps, of which 217,982 were blacklisted.

Following three consecutive quarters of decline, the number of blacklisted apps rose 15% between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019.
Rogue apps still appear given Android is the world's most popular mobile platform and the Play store is more open to developers, but new app stores are emerging with far more malicious intent.
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After Google Play, which had nearly 38,000 blacklisted apps between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, 9Game was the second most blacklisted store. Most (96%) of the applications on 9Game.com and 30% of apps in "Vmallapps" were blacklisted.

9Game appears to be a "wholly malicious" store, with nearly every app requesting permission for the camera, location data, Wi-Fi, file system, Internet, and settings.
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RiskIQ blog entry: The Last 18 Months of Mobile: Blacklisted Apps Rise, Antivirus Apps Prove More Harm Than Good
RiskIQ’s Q1 2019 Mobile Threat Landscape Report

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