A few days ago it came to light that Google kicked out 21 apps from the Android Market due to those apps being malware and gaining root access to the user’s smartphone. Well after being somewhat quite on the subject Google has now confirmed they have not only removed the offending apps but will also remove those apps from user’s devices.
According to an article over on Cnet, Google has announced via the Google Mobile Blog, they will use a “kill switch” to remotely remove the malicious applications from user devices, followed by an Android security update to repair any damage inflicted by the apps to affected users.
Apparently only handsets that run the Android operating system lower than Android 2.2.2 were vulnerable to the malware apps, which Google believes the only info accessed by said apps were the codes to identify the device and Android version that device was running.
According to the Google Mobile Blog…” If your device has been affected, you will receive an email from android-market-support@google.com over the next 72 hours. You will also receive a notification on your device that “Android Market Security Tool March 2011” has been installed. You may also receive notification(s) on your device that an application has been removed. You are not required to take any action from there; the update will automatically undo the exploit. Within 24 hours of the exploit being undone, you will receive a second email.”
Although the initial report said there were 21 malware apps removed from the Android Market, according to the Cnet article 58 malicious Android apps were found and removed from the Android Market but only after they had been downloaded roughly 260,000 times.
So I guess for those that think they may have been infected by any of these apps they should keep an eye open for that first email from Google, and then for the second to confirm your device is now ok.