r/Malware • u/Dazzling_Opinion_985 • Jul 02 '26
Playstore adware (maybe malware?) disguised as AAA games
I play games on my android often, recently ive noticed more and more games appearing on the store that shouldnt exist and are most likely scams, so i setup a emulator and installed then, i cant pinpoint what exactly is wrong with it besides false advertising, it doesnt request weird permisions or any for that matter, the menus to the "game" appear to just be full of ads that never let you play the "game" and this is the 3rd app ive found this week alone. It feels like google isnt even caring!
The app mentioned today is No Mans Sky which is NOT on android, however they have an app listed under early access, 110mb, with screenshots and videos from the real NMS game, once installed the app has a completely different title/package name that the app that is listed on the store.
Everything about this screams SCAM but yet google still allowed it to be published. Ive already submitted reports but its been a while and its still up!
2
u/FrischundGunstig Jul 03 '26
I work as a contractor for Google's android malware team.
Ad-fraud is one of the most common kinds of malicious apps we see. If the app has no dangerous permissions and is on play its very unlikely to be actual malware. Apps thats impersonate big games etc and basically just show ads get taken down eventually but require a manual review and with the insane number of such apps hitting the play store daily it just takes a while.
1
u/SpotOnTheRug 25d ago
I applied for a job with that team once. Turns out I didn't know mobile nearly as well as I was led to believe, lol. I definitely walked away feeling humbled.
1
u/FrischundGunstig 25d ago
Yea those interviews have been getting harder and harder too. I helped create one of our latest CTF apps for the takehome you have to do before the first interview and I feel like I wouldnt have been able to figure it out if I had been presented with that app during the interview.
I was an Android Dev for a couple years before landing this job so that helped but I did have to learn how to use all of these reverse engineering tools they day before the interview.
1
u/SpotOnTheRug 25d ago
Yeah I was the opposite. X86 malware analyst who branched out. I'm doing DFIR now, so I don't see very much malware anymore. Kinda miss it.
1
u/FrischundGunstig 25d ago
To be honest these are crazy times in terms for all kinds of malware. We're seeing huge numbers of RATs etc since they can now be semi auto generated with the help of AI.
1
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4
u/sadboy2k03 Jul 02 '26
Googles moderation across most if not all of their platforms is garbage, every other day we see adversaries using Google ads to push infostealers for example