Malware is everywhere on the internet, but the most dangerous thing with it is that you may never know about it until it's too late. Even worse, sometimes it comes from games and apps that you have always trusted. The bad news is, it has already happened with 5.6 lakh (560.000) users and the malware comes from Google Play apps.
Recently, Lukas Stefanko, a specialist in cybersecurity from ESET, tweeted 13 malicious games on Google Play. These games all come from one developer known as Luiz O Pinto and all are listed among driving games.
Stefanko said that these games have had a total of over 560.000 downloads before they are found to be malware and removed by Google. 2 of these are listed among trending apps on Google Play before the removal, meaning more people will have the risk of downloading them.
When you have finished downloading any of these games and try to launch them, you will encounter a bug that causes the games to crash. What really happens is that the game will automatically download an unidentified APK from an illegitimate domain in Istanbul. This APK contains malware and once it is successfully installed, the game's icon on your screen will be hidden, all to trick you believe that it was simply a bug and forget about removing it.
After that, the malware can do multiple things, from running constantly in the background causing lagging, showing ads on your phone and even more dangerous, stealing your data.
As mentioned before, malware is difficult to tackle especially if it can come from a reliable source. However, it's certainly feasible. Google is regularly thought to be too lax on their rules for apps allowed on Google Play. On the other hand, Apple is considered way too prohibitive, frequently removing applications for even more uncertain reasons than security.
It's worth noting that Google needs to take in something from Apple's policy, particularly when many tech companies are as of now being blamed for not doing enough to protect their users' data from being attacked or stolen.
Though Google has removed a total of 700.000 malicious apps from its store last year and is trying to develop a more efficient back-end surveillance to block the chance of these apps to appear on the store. However, it seems like that's not enough yet.