UPDATE: Further to the below I wanted to share the below statement and background briefing.
Statement
‘Several of Sky’s Android apps have been temporarily removed from the Google play store after app pages were defaced early on Sunday morning. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused to Sky customers wanting to download our Android apps and are working hard to make these apps available again as soon as possible. Sky Android apps that Sky customers have previously downloaded should continue to work as normal, so there is no need for customers to remove these apps from their Android device.’
On background (not for quotation)
– Sky’s Android apps were not compromised – only the app pages for Sky apps on the Google play store were altered
– Roughly at the same time that the app pages were defaced, the security of the Sky Help Team twitter feed was compromised. The tweet issued early on Sunday morning advising customers to remove their previously downloaded app from their Android device was not from Sky, and there is no need for customers to remove previously downloaded Sky apps from their Android devices . This twitter account is currently locked down while we ensure it is re-secured
– We subsequently sent out a Tweet from other non-compromised Sky Twitter accounts to clarify this to customers
– Sky Android App pages were defaced & @Sky Help Team twitter feed compromised at c. 1am on Sunday morning. The Sky Android App pages were removed from Google Play store shortly afterwards while we cleaned them up in readiness for them being re-instated
– We expect the apps to re-enter the Google Play store shortly — and will advise customers via all customer service channels — including social media — when this happens
– We are in the process of investigating with Google how the our apps pages within the Play store were accessed by an unauthorised third party
In recent years a growing number of large organisations and companies have been targeted and hit with cyber crime and today we have news that popular Sky applications on the Android platform such as Sky Go have been hacked, and the news comes with a security warning.
The Sky Help Team earlier tweeted the warning that all of its apps, which also include Sky Sports News, Sky Wi-Fi, Sky Go, Sky+, Sky News, and Sky Movies have been compromised by the Syrian Electronic Army.
Sky warned users in their tweet to uninstall all of the apps and the help team will let users know when they are available again, and at the time of writing none of the apps are available via Google Play.
I’m a regular user of a number of the Sky apps myself and instead of trying to use them immediately uninstalled them from my Galaxy S3 and Nexus 7. Currently there is no information when the applications will be available again but hopefully it will be soon.