Tech News: "Never trust 3rd party app stores", says Slashgear

A prime advantage of using Android OS is the capability to download and install apps also from several 3rd party stores apart from the Google play store. Though it is advantageous at times, this 'sideload' process brings with it a whole lot of risks as well. One such app store was reportedly infected with malware thereby questioning the security of its users.

The recent report published by Slashgear, says that antivirus firm Kaspersky has confirmed the presence of malicious code in the popular Android store APKPure's official Android application. As per Kaspersky, the vulnerability was reported on April 8 and the firm has rectified it in the latest updated version 3.17.19.

Here it has to be mentioned that a similar kind of issue was detected by Kaspersky in the very same store, when the Camscanner app was infected with the Triada malware, much to the shock of its users.

In case, if you have the APKPure app installed on your mobile, you could be a victim of a harmful trojan virus that is capable of installing unwanted apps in the system partition. These apps are almost impossible to install without factory resetting the device. Certain users shall also see intrusive ads and some paid subscription prompts out of nowhere.

The only possible resolution as of now is to uninstall the affected app version and by then reinstalling the clean 3.17.19 version of the APKPure client. We recommend you all to scan your mobile for any possible infection such as the HEUR: Trojan-Dropper.AndroidOS.Triada.ap, in order to ensure the safety of your device. Also, it is a good practice to always install apps from Google's Play Store and open-source F-Droid repository.