"Backdoor Secrets Leave Mobile Apps Vulnerable to Hacking"

Cybersecurity researchers at Ohio State University found that a significant number of mobile apps have hidden behaviors that leave them vulnerable to hacking. The research team assessed 150,000 apps, 100,000 of which are the top apps downloaded from the Google Play Store. The other apps evaluated in this study come from an alternative market or are pre-installed apps on Android smartphones. Researchers discovered that 12,706 of the apps contain backdoor secrets or hidden behaviors. Attackers can reverse engineer these mobile apps to discover their backdoor secrets, which could allow them to steal private data. More than 4,000 mobile apps were also found to be capable of blocking content based on specific keywords without the users' knowledge. This article continues to discuss the performance and important findings of the study regarding some mobile apps' hidden behaviors, where these behaviors derive from, and the exploitation of backdoor secrets contained by apps, as well as the InputScope tool developed by researchers to help developers understand the vulnerabilities in their apps. 

Ohio State University reports "Backdoor Secrets Leave Mobile Apps Vulnerable to Hacking"