A team from CSIRO’s Data 61, University of NSW and UC Berkley in the US found a whole bunch of Android VPN apps contain viruses, spyware and other adware.
Researchers analysed the apps available for Android to look for nasties like trojans, spyware and adware — giving each an “anti-virus rank (AV)” based on what they found. The lower the rank, the better.
They found of the 283 apps they analysed, 38 per cent contained malware or malvertising (malicious advertising containing viruses).
“The findings are alarming and showing some very, very serious security and privacy issues,” Data61 researcher Dali Kaafar said.
“If they embed some malware that means that particular malware can see all the other traffic that is originating from your device.
Source: Viruses, spyware found in ‘alarming’ number of Android VPN apps
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