Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

kaspersky.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 155 posts

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#131

Post by Zenst »

andybak wrote: post #117
Zenst wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is and for many, always an issue. Adverts help pay for content, be that a game or website - people literally make a living that way that it has become a bit of a defacto approach. But when you are tied to including some code that goes off to a site that you have no or very little control over, you are outsourcing part of your company (web or app) into the hands of another in which, if they mess up. You are the t…

(sorry to be picky about an irrelevance but this one grates on me. "Ad" is an abbreviation not an acronym or initialisation - so no need to capitalize it as "AD". Same for "app" over "APP". Makes things hard to read for me as it sounds like someone shouting occasional words in an otherwise normal sentence!)

A fair comment and thank you, duly noted.

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#132

Post by Zenst »

mattmar96 wrote: post #128
andybak wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(sorry to be picky about an irrelevance but this one grates on me. "Ad" is an abbreviation not an acronym or initialisation - so no need to capitalize it as "AD". Same for "app" over "APP". Makes things hard to read for me as it sounds like someone shouting occasional words in an otherwise normal sentence!)

I normally wouldn't do this, but it's initialism not initialisation

I'm loving such educational feedback - full stop.

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#133

Post by cannedslime »

Anyone remembers when the android play store wasn't ranked by how much revenue google got out of it? Remember when even google employees put out their own apps free of ads like solitare etc. But all these free, ad-less apps mysteriously either disappeared from play store or got sent to the very bottom of every search query?

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#134

Post by ignoramous »

higginsc wrote: post #126
pjc50 wrote: post #123

Ironically this is right next to "Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app" on the front page. False negatives and false positives.

At a sufficiently large scale, even rare events happen constantly.

Related news.yc discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14038044

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#135

Post by ignoramous »

a254613e wrote: post #43

So what exactly did this malware do most of the time? In the original kaspersky report it says "For example, an app with this malicious code may show intrusive ads and sign users up for paid subscriptions.". So how/did it sign up users for paid subscriptions without user interaction? Does android allow something like that? Aren't all apps sandboxed? In general how is the android sandboxing and permission system nowad…

> So how/did it sign up users for paid subscriptions without user interaction? Does android allow something like that? Aren't all apps sandboxed?

This sandbox isn't a VM per-se in that the apps can view and interact with other apps via various api-interfaces, sometimes with devastating consequence (like apps with storage permission scraping location information from EXIF, or apps with SMS permission scraping inbox for your financial transactions).

> In general how is the android sandboxing and permission system nowadays?

There's lot of confusion and most users simply grant all access. Ask-on-first-use doesn't really help with privacy, at all. iOS, I think, has it better: Grant permission only when app is in the foreground.

That said, I am working on an app that'd help revoke and grant permissions automatically to apps depending on whether they're in the foreground or background; firewall apps from internet; block trackers. This isn't something you can't not do on Android today. And if you choose to root your device, there are apps like AF+ Wall, Privacy Guard (on LineageOS), XPrivacyLua (with XposedMod), NoRoot Firewall, NetGuard that are excellent offerings but sometimes feel like they're built for the power-user.

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#136

Post by ignoramous »

GordonS wrote: post #2

For the past few days I've been seen spam events in my calendar about "free iPhones" and "webcam girls" - I couldn't figure out where they were coming from. I have CamScanner installed, so presumably that's the source... Now, I can remove CamScanner (which is a shame, it's a really good app), but how can I ensure the trojan is also removed? I tried the Avast AntiVirus app, but it didn't find anything. What does every…

AVs for Android are themselves a privacy nightmare. You need to grant them all sorts of permissions and their privacy policies, oft times, leaves a lot to be desired. That said, Malwarebytes is decent, and so are some other offerings, but I wouldn't recommend using any.

Here's basic steps you can follow:

1. Uninstall apps you don't use.

2. Firewall apps that do not require internet access to function (Calculator, CamScanner, Alarm Clock etc)

3. Block trackers and ads (use pi-hole and set private-dns).

4. Remove permissions from apps that do not really require the permission (Bank apps with all sorts of permissions).

5. Disable notification for apps that do not really need to notify you of anything at all (most games).

6. Install apps you're not comfortable using in work-profile, or in a privacy friendly app-sandbox (parallel-space started as one, but alas, aren't privacy-friendly anymore).

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#137

Post by lern_too_spel »

scarface74 wrote: post #120
lern_too_spel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most Android phones don’t get updates as frequently and definitely not as far long as iOS. This is irrelevant. Most phones period don't get updates frequently. Does that mean you shouldn't buy any phone? No, you should buy a phone that does get updated, and there are plenty of Android options.

IOS 12 supports devices back to 2013. How many Android devices get support that far back? Apple also released an OS update in July of this year for iPhones back to the iPhone 4S from 2011. https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/22/apple-issu...

> How many Android devices get support that far back?

Also irrelevant. Most people don't use phones that old. If they upgrade devices on a normal schedule, there are plenty of Android devices that will get updated during that time. Even better, their system apps will also get updated at an even higher frequency during that time transparently, while iOS users have to wait for an OS update and reboot their devices. This is an issue with highly vulnerable apps like iMessage and Safari.

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#138

Post by scarface74 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #137
scarface74 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IOS 12 supports devices back to 2013. How many Android devices get support that far back? Apple also released an OS update in July of this year for iPhones back to the iPhone 4S from 2011. https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/22/apple-issu...

> How many Android devices get support that far back? Also irrelevant. Most people don't use phones that old. If they upgrade devices on a normal schedule, there are plenty of Android devices that will get updated during that time. Even better, their system apps will also get updated at an even higher frequency during that time transparently, while iOS users have to wait for an OS update and reboot their devices. Thi…

Also irrelevant. Most people don't use phones that old.

There is a vibrant official second hand market for iPhones where people sell their phones and the hand me down market. It really helps when you can still use an older device with the newest operating system. Anecdotally, my son is still using my circa 2015 iPhone 6s with the latest OS. According to many benchmarks, it was faster than high end Android phones up until 2018 and is still faster than mid tier Android phones.

Also the length of time that people are keeping their phones is almost three years (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43ejej/study-smartphone-i...). That’s longer than you can get support for most Android phones.

Even better, their system apps will also get updated at an even higher frequency during that time transparently, while iOS users have to wait for an OS update and reboot their devices. This is an issue with highly vulnerable apps like iMessage and Safari.

Well fortunately we have statistics about how many iOS users are running the latest OS compared to Android users from the prospective companies. We know that your conjecture is probably false.

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#139

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

Marsymars wrote: post #112
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #44

PlayProtect is not detecting and warning users about CamScanner even when it has been removed from the Playstore. I've tested it via manual scan on PlayProtect as well, no dice. Isn't that what it is supposed to do? Has anyone ever got any app flagged by PlayProtect? If it's useless, then rather I would disable it than to give it access to all my installed apps. Google Engineers here, please ping your Google Play tea…

> Has anyone ever got any app flagged by PlayProtect? Yes, it started flagging all the apps my company distributes internally for testing purposes. Getting it to stop seemed impractical, so my company's guidance is now to disable Play Protect on any test device.

Is it certificate issue? Or a phonegap build like another user has said.

Re: CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play

#140

Post by lern_too_spel »

scarface74 wrote: post #138
lern_too_spel wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many Android devices get support that far back? Also irrelevant. Most people don't use phones that old. If they upgrade devices on a normal schedule, there are plenty of Android devices that will get updated during that time. Even better, their system apps will also get updated at an even higher frequency during that time transparently, while iOS users have to wait for an OS update and reboot their devices. Thi…

Also irrelevant. Most people don't use phones that old. There is a vibrant official second hand market for iPhones where people sell their phones and the hand me down market. It really helps when you can still use an older device with the newest operating system. Anecdotally, my son is still using my circa 2015 iPhone 6s with the latest OS. According to many benchmarks, it was faster than high end Android phones up u…

> There is a vibrant official second hand market for iPhones where people sell their phones and the hand me down market.

Irrelevant. I'm not buying from the second hand market. If you want to push that benefit, push it on somebody who will.

> We know that your conjecture is probably false.

We know I'm right. It takes weeks for iOS users to update their phones if iMessage or Safari has an update. On Android, the SMS and browser apps updates automatically without the user noticing. For the phones that receive system updates, the statistics show they update just as quickly on Android as on iOS. For users who upgrade devices frequently like me, these Android devices are strictly better than iOS devices in security.

Post reply on HN