Spies Keep Sneaking Malware Into Google Play

Google's Play Store for Android apps has never had a reputation for the strictest protections from malware. Shady adware and even banking trojans have managed over the years to repeatedly defy Google's security checks.

Now security researchers have found what appears to be a more rare form of Android abuse: state-sponsored spies who repeatedly slipped their targeted hacking tools into the Play Store and onto victims' phones.

At a remote virtual version of its annual Security Analyst Summit, researchers from the Russian security firm Kaspersky today plan to present research about a hacking campaign they call PhantomLance, in which spies hid malware in the Play Store...

Once Kaspersky had identified the PhantomLance apps, its researchers were able to match their code with older malware used by OceanLotus, which has been active since at least 2013. more