25 Google Play Apps Cryptojack Users In Spite Of Ban
According to SophosLabs, there are 25 apps on the official Google Play store that contain script enabling the crypto jacking of users. A report published by the company states that the said-apps have “been downloaded and installed more than 120,000 times.”
“The apps said to be containing crypto jacking code are LHDS Vendors , which is published by Taste of Life Group, Mobeleader from Abser Technologies S.L., Palkar by Palpostr.com, Dizi Fragmanları İzle from Oguzhan Kivrak, Helper for Knight Game from Evgeny Solovyov, Game Viet 2048 from Thanhtu Media, Trance Droid by Happy Appys, A Paintbox For Kids by Uwe Post, Afterlife: RPG Clicker CCG by Levius LLC, Dominoes Games from Fun Board Games, Info Guru Pendidikan by Cakrawala Pengetahuan, Lighton by Buyguard, Tapbugs and Dreamspell – both published by Riccotz, and 11 apps published by Gadgetium – all of which comprised “preparation apps for standardized tests given in the [United States].”
Out of the 25 apps found to be crypto jacking, 22 contain an implementation of Coinhive’s code.
Research revealed that Lighton and Mobeleader were hosting mining scripts on their own servers – “presumably to thwart firewalls or parental controls/reputation services that might block Coinhive’s domain by default.”
Xmrig was found running in a paintbox for kids – “an open source CPU miner that can mine several cryptocurrencies in addition to XMR.”
It appears that the Google Play Store’s July ban on “apps that mine cryptocurrency on devices,” did not stop some apps to be crypto jacking users.
The ban came after several other measures that were to crack down on crypto across Google’s platforms. Such measures include prohibiting the cryptocurrency mining extensions from the Chrome Web Store las April, and the ban of advertising content in relation to “cryptocurrencies and related content” from Google’s platforms in March.
Google announced last week that beginning October 2018, the Google ads policy on financial products and services will be updated to allow regulated cryptocurrency exchanges to advertise in the United States and Japan. This is a sign that Google is softening its position on cryptocurrency, since the launch of its crackdown.
