Google Eliminated 300 Apps from Play Store

A group of scientists from various leading tech companies has written a post to share data regarding the cyber attacks that impacted lots of apps from a botnet on Google Play Store last month.

The group also wanted to be aware of what is being carried out to restrain additional traps by cyber criminals. As per the post rolled out by Akamai, the Cloud delivery firm, this week, various content providers and CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) were subjected to noteworthy attacks named “WireX” from a botnet earlier last month. A botnet is a set of connections of personal PCs impacted with nasty software and handled as a cluster without the knowledge of the owners.

The “WireX” botnet includes mainly of Android gadgets operating malicious apps and is developed to make a DoS (Denial of Service) attack. This takes place when various systems overflow the resources or bandwidth of a targeted network, typically one or more servers of the web. The botnet is frequently related with notes of ransom to victims. Google was warned about the attendance on Play Store of this malware. This warning was given by scientists from Cloudflare, Akamai, Oracle Dyn, Flashpoint, RiskIQ, and other organizations who cooperated to battle this botnet, as per the sources.

Soon following the warning, Google got rid of hundreds of impacted apps and began the procedure to eliminate the apps from all gadgets. “We recognized almost 300 apps related with the problem, removed them from the app store, and we are in the procedure of eliminating them from all impacted gadgets,” Google claimed to the media in a statement. “The findings of the researchers, joint with our own investigation, have allowed us to better defend Android consumers, all over the world,” the statement further added.

The first on hand symptoms of the WireX botnet emerged last month as small attacks that went ignored during that time. These early attacks were negligible and recommended that the malware was in progress or in the premature stages of employment. Extended attacks were recognized afterwards in the same month, with some attacks sourced from at least 70,000 synchronized IP addresses.

Investigation of the data related to incoming attack exposed that gadgets from over 100 nations took part, an unusual trait for present botnets. The analysis later unveiled a link between the attacking IPs and something nasty operating on top of the Android operating system, as per the sources.

About: Rutuja Bhegade

Contributor Rutuja’s long standing experience in the field of business and industry research is reflected in her insightful news articles as presented on Share Tech News. Her interest lies in covering Technology and Internet World on these increasingly consumer-oriented industries. Her understanding of Technical News Writing techniques gives her news stories an engaging twist.