Hundreds of Malicious Android Apps Received 60 Million Downloads

Bitdefender discovered a large active campaign on Google Play where at least 331 malicious Android apps — posing as legitimate utilities like QR scanners and health apps — accumulated over 60 million downloads. The apps displayed full-screen ads for ad fraud, redirected some users to phishing sites to harvest credentials, and used evasive techniques (such as disabling the launcher and later enabling it via native code and content provider abuse); many apps were initially benign and received malicious code in later updates, and some remained available on Google Play as of March 2025.