26 Malware Apps Removed from Android Marketplace
This past weekend, 26 applications were removed for housing harmful code called Droid Dream Lite. An estimated 30,000-120,000 Android device users were infected by the Droid Dream Lite variant. The malicious software first affected Android users in March as Droid Dream. The developers created the malware by taking existing apps and modifying them to send details (including IMEI and IMSI info) about the infected handset to a remote server upon receiving a call.
The issue of your IMEI being in the control of someone else is not a tremendous threat on the grand scale of potential viruses. The responsible malware developers are most likely infecting the apps just to prove they are capable of doing so. With that being said though, it’s great that Google caught the malware and promptly removed them (from the Market and infected devices) regardless of the level of the threat. It does leave us wondering, since Google doesn’t vet the apps, if more malicious apps could get through.
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Wonder if Amazon vets the Android apps it posts to *its* store?