Google has blocked more than 2.3 million Android applications for the Google Play store in 2024. They violated the policy of the platform, which made them potentially dangerous for users. In addition, the company blocked 158 thousand developers’ accounts for trying to publish malicious applications, including spy software.
Image source: Bleeping Computer
For comparison, in 2023, Google blocked 2.28 million dangerous applications, and in 2022-1.5 million. In the same years, the company deprived of access to the platform of 333 thousand and 173 thousand developers, respectively. The increased number of blocked applications in 2024 on the platform is partially explained by the fact that in the search for harmful employees of the company was helped by the artificial intelligence system.
«Today, more than 92 % of our human reviews of harmful applications are carried out using artificial intelligence, which allows us to take faster and more accurate measures to prevent the penetration of malicious applications into Google Play. Thanks to this, we were able to block access to Google Play for much more than ever the number of malicious applications, ”Google explained.
The company also said that she prevented 1.3 cases of applications for excessive rights and permits that would provide unnecessary access to confidential user data.
In 2024, a security system built into Android called Google Play Protect received a significant update of real -time protection even for applications that are installed outside the Google Play platform. Google claims that the standard Android defense scanned more than 200 billion applications daily, performing an analysis at real -time code level. During 2024, these scans revealed more than 13 million new malicious applications obtained outside the Google Play.
Applications developers also received new tools for better protection of their software from malicious SDK and unlawful operations, and the Google Play SDK index expanded to 80 new entrusted SDKs last year. The wider implementation of the API Play Integrity led to a decrease in violations from unreliable sources by 80 %. Now 91 % of application installations use the confidentiality security functions available in Android 13 and later versions of the operating system.
The system of blocking the installation of unreliable APK from Google, first launched as a pilot project in Singapore in February 2024, is now expanded to Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam. Its success in 2024 is reflected in the prevention of 36 million attempts to install 200,000 unique applications with 10 million Android devices.