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>>On Tuesday evening, the Android team was made aware of a number of malicious applications published to Android Market. Within minutes of becoming aware, we id

by credo 16y ago

>>On Tuesday evening, the Android team was made aware of a number of malicious applications published to Android Market. Within minutes of becoming aware, we identified and removed the malicious applications. As per http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/fvepu/someone_just_ripped_off_21_popular_free_apps_from/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/fvepu/someone_just_... the developer of the original app had been trying to get Google to remove the offending apps for more than a week. Google took no action until after a third party reported the problem on reddit. The post says that Google acted "within minutes". However, it doesn't even mention the fact that the problem existed on the market for more than a week. Posting an update is fine, but it is troubling to see a post that refuses to acknowledge basic facts. If they aren't willing to acknowledge a problem, it will be very difficult for them to prevent this and other problems from recurring.

foobarbazetc 16y ago
"within minutes" is pretty much an outright lie. Just the PR equivalent of "nothing to see here, move along. app review? what's that? rainbows and unicorns and Androids!".
- SamReidHughes 16y ago
  Two million is a number of minutes.
- zmmmmm 16y ago
  Care to explain what they "lied" about? It's pretty well documented that the apps were gone within 5 minutes of them being notified of a security problem.
trotsky 16y ago
While I don't want to minimize the pain of having your app copied and republished, I'd be very surprised if the author had submitted a properly sworn DMCA takedown notice, which is the correct way to get action on these matters. I submitted a DMCA notice for the Android market in november, and the offending application was gone within 24 hours. I'm fairly sure apple requires a DMCA takedown notice to pull copyrighted content from the app store as well. http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr_dmca&product=androidmarket http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr...
- nexneo 16y ago
  This isn't about DMCA notice. I'm not android developer but user and I don't like Trojan stay on official market for entire week until it went to public. That means if original author didn't cared this will stay on market forever.
  - trotsky 16y ago
    It is about a DMCA notice. The GPP said "the developer of the original app had been trying to get Google to remove the offending apps for more than a week." He wasn't complaining about trojans, he didn't know about them, he was complaining about copyright infringement. I'd be very surprised if they would have remained for long at all if he had submitted a DMCA compliant complaint correctly. Once they were reported as trojans they were pulled the same day. I'm not sure what is expected from google here: Clearly they need to get a better handle on licensees pushing minor updates. That privesc has been around forever, and it's still there on my phone and that's super shitty - updating is android's achilles heel. But even if they get real good at that there will still be some exploits out there, every platform has them. Do people expect google should be able to make it so no malicious code can ever be run? Seems like that's a battle nobody has won. Do people expect google to switch to a curated, only google approved apps marketplace? I'd sure be unhappy if they did. Do people expect google to pull apps from the marketplace on copyright complaints even if they aren't submitted/sworn correctly and potentially let all kinds of fraudulent takedown mayhem occur (because the submitter wouldn't be liable)? Seems unwise. Do people expect google to do automated scans and blocks of suspicious code on the marketplace? Sounds like what they are planning on doing.
    - spiffworks 16y ago
      This is actually an extremely interesting technical problem though, isn't it? Given all the computational power Google has, I'm sure they could dedicate one emulator per new submission, and run continuous checks on the app without ever resorting to manually reviewing the apps the way that Apple does. My guess is that the Android team is the most overworked team inside Google, and they're struggling to keep up with their own growth, so they've had to deprioritize some things like the market, and focus on simply getting Honeycomb out of the door. By my theory, the Market should see some real improvements in the coming months. We'll see, I guess.

by credo 16y ago

foobarbazetc 16y ago

"within minutes" is pretty much an outright lie. Just the PR equivalent of "nothing to see here, move along. app review? what's that? rainbows and unicorns and Androids!".

SamReidHughes 16y ago
Two million is a number of minutes.
zmmmmm 16y ago
Care to explain what they "lied" about? It's pretty well documented that the apps were gone within 5 minutes of them being notified of a security problem.

trotsky 16y ago

While I don't want to minimize the pain of having your app copied and republished, I'd be very surprised if the author had submitted a properly sworn DMCA takedown notice, which is the correct way to get action on these matters. I submitted a DMCA notice for the Android market in november, and the offending application was gone within 24 hours. I'm fairly sure apple requires a DMCA takedown notice to pull copyrighted content from the app store as well. http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr_dmca&product=androidmarket http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr...

nexneo 16y ago
This isn't about DMCA notice. I'm not android developer but user and I don't like Trojan stay on official market for entire week until it went to public. That means if original author didn't cared this will stay on market forever.
- trotsky 16y ago
  It is about a DMCA notice. The GPP said "the developer of the original app had been trying to get Google to remove the offending apps for more than a week." He wasn't complaining about trojans, he didn't know about them, he was complaining about copyright infringement. I'd be very surprised if they would have remained for long at all if he had submitted a DMCA compliant complaint correctly. Once they were reported as trojans they were pulled the same day. I'm not sure what is expected from google here: Clearly they need to get a better handle on licensees pushing minor updates. That privesc has been around forever, and it's still there on my phone and that's super shitty - updating is android's achilles heel. But even if they get real good at that there will still be some exploits out there, every platform has them. Do people expect google should be able to make it so no malicious code can ever be run? Seems like that's a battle nobody has won. Do people expect google to switch to a curated, only google approved apps marketplace? I'd sure be unhappy if they did. Do people expect google to pull apps from the marketplace on copyright complaints even if they aren't submitted/sworn correctly and potentially let all kinds of fraudulent takedown mayhem occur (because the submitter wouldn't be liable)? Seems unwise. Do people expect google to do automated scans and blocks of suspicious code on the marketplace? Sounds like what they are planning on doing.
  - spiffworks 16y ago
    This is actually an extremely interesting technical problem though, isn't it? Given all the computational power Google has, I'm sure they could dedicate one emulator per new submission, and run continuous checks on the app without ever resorting to manually reviewing the apps the way that Apple does. My guess is that the Android team is the most overworked team inside Google, and they're struggling to keep up with their own growth, so they've had to deprioritize some things like the market, and focus on simply getting Honeycomb out of the door. By my theory, the Market should see some real improvements in the coming months. We'll see, I guess.