A strange company in Panama has been paying the developers of the Android applications to integrate an SDK have the capacity for raising important data from the phones of the users, including information of copy-paste.
Security researchers have speckled 11 Android apps gathering sensitive information from the phones of clients, including email addresses, copy-and-paste data, and phone numbers.
The calculations arrive from security firm AppCensus; it analyzed a software development kit [SDK] managing the applications of Android, which cooperatively were installed about 46.5 million times on the Google Play Store.
The 11 Android applications filled with the SDK include two Quran-themed apps, a generic QR barcode scanner, a “Speed Camera Radar” app, and a program to transform your smartphone into a mouse. In October, AppCensus reported its findings to Google, which promptly removed the apps and others containing the SDK. (You can find a link to each affected app in the AppCensus report.)
All 11 Android applications have since reappeared, meanwhile without Measurement Systems’ software development kit in the seat. In a declaration, Google said PCMag: “All applications on Google Play must obey our policies, aside from the maker. When we decide an application infringes these policies, we take a specific action.”
Read More: Google is dumping/ditching Chrome’s data saver mode on Android phones
AppCensus also analyzed the SDK to a mysterious company in Panama known as Measurement Systems which is been paying Android app makers to assimilate the software development kit. The website of the company claims that it is paid $2.11 million to the partners so far, and declares thousands of the applications have taken advantage of the SDK.
Although, The Wall Street Journal reviews Measurement Systems has links to the contractor of the defense in Virginia known as “Vostrom Holdings” that does cyber intelligence work for government agencies of the US. “Measurement Systems claimed application-makers it wanted data chiefly from the Middle East, Central, Asia and Eastern Europe Asia,” the Journal added, mentioning interior documents from the company.
