Normally I would agree with this perspective, but in this case the “malicious app” is just a demo. It requires no permissions to do the malicious behavior, which means that the relevant code could be included in any app and wouldn’t trigger a user approval, a permissions request or a security alert. This could be hiding in anything that you install.
Having cleaned a bunch of old folks phones in the past years this is far more common than we ”advanced” users think. It often starts with clicking an advert or some spam mail or message from (infected) friend, which to them, looks absolutely legit. Then the installed app spams the user with notifications to install more ”PDF readers”, ”phone cleanup apps” and whatnot. In best case these just flood the user with ads but just as easily can do more malicious stuff.
After some schooling (”never click anything that is offered to you” etc.) and putting up defencew like AdGuard (system level) the instances of ”my phone is slow”, ”what does this message mean” etc. have radically decreased. Apple devices have their own issues but this kind of troubles are next to non-existent there.
Let me stop you right there… and leave.
Normally I would agree with this perspective, but in this case the “malicious app” is just a demo. It requires no permissions to do the malicious behavior, which means that the relevant code could be included in any app and wouldn’t trigger a user approval, a permissions request or a security alert. This could be hiding in anything that you install.
Man in the middle an app download or find some kind of exploit to inject the code from a website, ta da.
I mean, obviously there’s more to it than this but.
That’s how these things work. They’re chained.
Hmm, yes that can happen, but can it happen if you’re downloading directly from the Play store?
first you download something and it has nothing malicious, then you update it later and then it has something.
There are reports all the time of play store apps containing malware.
I’m sure there are apps that have malware built in yes, but I mean the MITM approach during an app download that you were describing.
Oh.
Not sure. I was speaking in hypotheticals. I’m sure it’s possible though.
Having cleaned a bunch of old folks phones in the past years this is far more common than we ”advanced” users think. It often starts with clicking an advert or some spam mail or message from (infected) friend, which to them, looks absolutely legit. Then the installed app spams the user with notifications to install more ”PDF readers”, ”phone cleanup apps” and whatnot. In best case these just flood the user with ads but just as easily can do more malicious stuff.
After some schooling (”never click anything that is offered to you” etc.) and putting up defencew like AdGuard (system level) the instances of ”my phone is slow”, ”what does this message mean” etc. have radically decreased. Apple devices have their own issues but this kind of troubles are next to non-existent there.