Google removes 85 apps from Play Store that were hiding adware inside: Report

Security researchers at Trend Micro found 85 apps on Play Store that were hiding adware inside them. Google was informed about these infected apps and has since removed them."We found another example of adware's potential real-life impact on Google Play. Trend Micro detects this as AndroidOS_Hidenad.HRXH. Apart from displaying advertisements that are difficult to close, it employs unique techniques to evade detection through user behaviour and time-based triggers," Ecular Xu, mobile threat response engineer at Trend Micro, wrote in a blog post on Friday.[caption id="attachment_5504641" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Representational Image.[/caption]Researchers revealed that a majority of these infected apps were posing as photography as well as gaming apps and were downloaded over eight million times.Super Selfie, Cos Camera, Pop Camera, and One Stroke Line Puzzle were the most popular among the total 85 apps that were discovered by researchers as being adware-infected.The report by the researchers said that all these apps were uploaded on the platform by different developer accounts and were signed by different digital certificates, however, they all exhibited similar behaviour and shared the same code.But before you panic, researchers at Trend Micro also pointed out that this adware should ideally only affect phones running older versions of Android.