NoSuchApp for Android highlights apps secretly connecting to tracking sites
When it comes to knowing what apps do and don't do on Android, there is little that average users can find out in advance or after installation.
While the requested permissions may provide information about data the app may access or modify, and also about network or Internet connections it may establish, nothing is provide in detail.
For instance, you may know that an app connects to the Internet based on its permission requests but you don't know to which sites and often why.
A recently published research paper suggests that many free applications offered on Google Play connect to urls in the background.
The team analyzed 2146 free applications in all 25 categories on Google Play based on popularity and recency and discovered that these applications connected to "almost 250,000 unique URLs across 1985 top level domains".
The methodology used to analyze these apps was the following:
- All apps were downloaded and executed on a Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini smartphone running Android 4.1.2.
- The phone was configured to use a local VPN which the researchers monitored for traffic activity using tcpdump to create a package for each individual application.
- A series of 10000 automated user interactions with each application simulated use while the app was running.
- Each packet capture was processed with tshark to extract urls which the team compared against EasyList and EasyPrivacy, two popular lists used by Adblock Plus and other adblocking and anti-tracking extensions and programs.
- Last but not least, all urls are checked on Virustotal as well.
The conclusion is devastating. About 10% of all tested apps connect to more than 500 distinct URLs with the top applications all connecting to more than 1000 distinct URLs each and about 100 top level domains.
About 33% of apps don't connect to ad-related sites while the remaining applications connect to an average number of 40 ad urls (some to more than 1000) with Google owned sites at the top.
About one quarter of apps communicate with tracking servers. Some connect to more than 800 different trackers.
As far as Virustotal ratings are concerned, 94.4% of all urls tested had a suspicion score of 0 with the worst case for the rest being that hits were recorded by three of 52 different engines used by the service.
NoSuchApp
The developers have created an application that introduces reporting functionality on Android similar to what they have done.
The app is not available on Google Play currently but plans have been made to publish it on the site in the future. For now, it is only available directly on this address.
Update: The download is no longer available due to traffic. We have set up a mirror here on Ghacks. Download the file with a tap or click on the following link. Please note that we don't support it in any way and cannot be held responsible for issues that may occur. nsa_app_secon.zip
Note: It installed fine on My Motorola G running Android 5 but crashed after the introduction.
The app installs a local proxy and monitors traffic from applications run on the system to identify 3rd party trackers and malicious destinations.
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?