Page 77 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2023

How Google Play Store Security May Fail to

Protect Users from Stealthy Malware

Incremental Malicious Update Attack (IMUTA)

By Zia Muhammad and Zahid Anwar, Department of Computer Science, NDSU

Android is the leading operating system in the smartphone industry with more than 71% of the global
market share. All Android-based smartphones arrive with a preinstalled application called Google Play
Store which provides access to over 2.65 billion mobile applications and games. It is a free, powerful,
and prominent platform for both mobile users and application developers.

In 2022 alone, more than 110 billion downloads were recorded through the Play Store. Due to such a
high download volume, Google deploys a security tool called the Google Play Protect which scans all
uploads in an attempt to root out potentially malicious applications dubbed as malware.

But is this tool self-sufficient and resilient to contemporary cyber-attacks? According to a recent research
article published in the Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing (JAIHC), a stealthy

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2023 Edition 77
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