Phones

The Samsung Galaxy App Retailer is meant to be a house for virus contaminated apps

Source: Pocketnow

If you’re using an Android phone, chances are you’ll open the Google Play Store by default when you want to install an app. However, if you own a Samsung smartphone, the company gives you another option too, as they ship their own app store called the Samsung Galaxy Store on their phone. There are some apps that are “Made for Samsung” and some apps that are not available on the Google Play Store, such as: B. Epic Games Launcher. However, it doesn’t seem safe to download apps from Samsung’s App Store, as a report by AndroidPolice claims that some apps on the Galaxy Store are infected with malware.

According to the report, Samsung has a pirated movie app called Showbox in its app store. When installing this app or other apps based on this app, Google’s built-in Play Protect on Android triggers a warning stating that this app may be harmful. The publication ran a virus test on “Virustotal” which revealed that these apps generate about a dozen low-quality warnings ranging from “Riskware” to “Adware”. The report also shows that these apps are accessing resources that you normally wouldn’t expect a movie or TV show app to access, such as: B. Contacts, call logs, and the phone.

Source: AndroidPolice

The publication reached out to Android security analyst linuxct to learn more about the issues reported by Play Protect. The analyst revealed that many of these malware-infected apps contain ad tech (advertising technology) that can dynamically execute code. What this essentially means is that the ads displayed in these apps are capable of executing “other code” that “might” contain “malware”. * “So anytime [these ads] can become a trojan / malware so it’s unsafe and that’s why so many vendors have flagged it in VT / Play Protect, “he added.

“Linuxct added that there are very few legitimate use cases for this functionality [ads that are capable of executing other code], and it could easily be used as a weapon. “

Even if a Reddit thread claims Showbox has stopped working, the app is still being published on the Galaxy App Store. And not only does Samsung host apps in its Galaxy App Store that could contain viruses and malware, but it also allows developers to upload clones of these movie piracy apps. Google doesn’t allow apps like Showbox to be hosted on the Play Store.

Samsung has not yet officially commented on this issue. However, since these apps trigger malware alerts, we recommend that you not install them on your Samsung Galaxy device. Did you find an app with such problems in the Galaxy Store? Let us know in the comments section below!

Via: AndroidPolice

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