Google blocked 2.36 million risky Android apps from Play Store in 2024 - Related to 2024, connect, &, 2.5m, student
Google blocked 2.36 million risky Android apps from Play Store in 2024
Google blocked [website] million Android app submissions to the Play Store in 2024 due to violations of its policies that made them potentially risky for consumers.
In addition, 158,000 developer accounts were banned for attempting to publish harmful apps like malware and spyware on Android's official app store.
In comparison, Google blocked 2,280,000 risky apps in 2023 and 1,500,000 apps in 2022, while the figures for blocked Play developer accounts were 333,000 and 173,000, respectively.
The larger number of blocked apps in 2024 is partly attributed to AI assisting human reviews, which was used in 92% of the violating cases.
"Today, over 92% of our human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted, allowing us to take quicker and more accurate action to help prevent harmful apps from becoming available on Google Play," explained Google.
"That's enabled us to stop more bad apps than ever from reaching individuals through the Play Store, protecting individuals from harmful or malicious apps before they can cause any damage."
Apart from rejections and blocks, it has also prevented [website] million apps from getting excessive permissions that would have granted them unnecessary access to sensitive user data.
Google Play Protect, Android's built-in security system, received significant upgrades in 2024 to enhance real-time protection against malicious apps, scams, and fraud, even for apps installed outside the Play Store.
The tech giant says Android's default protection suite scanned over 200 billion apps daily, performing live code-level analysis. During 2024, these scans identified over 13 million new malware apps sourced from outside Google Play.
App developers were also given new tools to superior secure their apps from malicious SDKs and abuse, with the Google Play SDK index expanding greatly last year to add another 80 trusted SDKs.
Moreover, increased adoption of the Play Integrity API saw an 80% reduction in abuse from untrusted findings. In comparison, 91% of app installs now use security and privacy protection elements available in Android 13 and later.
Google's untrusted APK installation blocking system, first launched as a pilot in Singapore in February 2024, has now been expanded to Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Its 2024 success is reflected in stopping 36 million installation attempts of 200,000 unique apps from nesting in 10 million Android devices.
As Google strengthens Android protections yearly, gaps in security remain, and cybercriminals employ new, more advanced methods to bypass automated scanners.
people must remain vigilant, only trust reputable publishers, keep the number of installed apps at the minimum necessary, scrutinize and revoke risky app permissions, and ensure Play Protect is running at all times.
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Ivanti fixes three critical flaws in Connect Secure & Policy Secure
Ivanti has released security updates for Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS), Ivanti Policy Secure (IPS), and Ivanti Secure Access Client (ISAC) to address multiple vulnerabilities, including three critical severity problems.
The firm learned about the flaws through its responsible disclosure program from security researchers at CISA and Akamai, and through the HackerOne bug bounty platform.
Ivanti notes in the security bulletin that it received no reports about any of the issues being actively exploited in the wild. However, it it recommends that clients install the security updates as soon as possible.
The three critical security vulnerabilities Ivanti patched are the following:
CVE-2025-22467 : Stack-based buffer overflow in ICS allows remote authenticated attackers with low privileges to execute code. (critical severity score of [website].
: Stack-based buffer overflow in ICS allows remote authenticated attackers with low privileges to execute code. (critical severity score of [website] CVE-2024-38657 : External control of a filename enables remote authenticated attackers to perform arbitrary file writing in ICS and IPS. (critical severity score of [website].
: External control of a filename enables remote authenticated attackers to perform arbitrary file writing in ICS and IPS. (critical severity score of [website] CVE-2024-10644: Code injection vulnerability enables remote authenticated attackers remote code execution in ICS and IPS. (critical severity score of [website].
Exploiting any of the three issues is possible from a remote location but an attacker needs to be authenticated. Furthermore, for two of them admin privileges are necessary to achieve remote code execution or to write arbitrary files.
Despite this, the risk is still considerable as insider threats or attackers who have stolen credentials via phishing, previous breaches, or via brute forcing passwords, can still leverage the flaws for malicious operations.
There are also five more flaws included in the bulletin, ranging from medium to high severity. Issues include cross-site scripting (XSS) issues, hardcoded keys, cleartext storage of sensitive data, and insufficient permissions.
The vulnerabilities impact ICS [website] and older, IPS [website] and older, and ISAC [website] and below. Details about which products are impacted by each flaw can be seen in the table below.
The issues were addressed in ICS version [website], IPS version [website], and ISAC [website], which are the recommended upgrade targets for system administrators.
Ivanti has also acknowledged that the issue also impacts Pulse Connect Secure [website], but stated it does not plan to offer fixes for these products as their support period has ended,.
“The Pulse Connect Secure [website] version of the product reached End of Engineering June 2024 and has reached End-of-Support as of December 31, 2024,” Ivanti explains.
“Because of this, the [website] version of Connect Secure no longer receives backported fixes,” the business added, encouraging end-people to upgrade to version [website] of Ivanti Connect Secure.
Ivanti has not provided any mitigations for the patched flaws and applying the latest improvement is the recommended solution.
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Student Loan Breach Exposes 2.5M Records
[website] million people were affected, in a breach that could spell more trouble down the line.
EdFinancial and the Oklahoma Student Loan Authority (OSLA) are notifying over [website] million loanees that their personal data was exposed in a data breach.
The target of the breach was Nelnet Servicing, the Lincoln, Neb.-based servicing system and web portal provider for OSLA and EdFinancial, .
Nelnet revealed the breach to affected loan recipients on July 21, 2022 via a letter.
“[Our] cybersecurity team took immediate action to secure the information system, block the suspicious activity, fix the issue, and launched[sic] an investigation with third-party forensic experts to determine the nature and scope of the activity,” .
’s general counsel, Bill Munn, to the state of Maine the breach occurred sometime between June 1, 2022 and July 22, 2022. However, a letter to affected end-clients pinpoints the breach to July 21. The breach was discovered on August 17, 2022.
“On July 21, 2022, Nelnet Servicing, LLC (Nelnet), our servicing system and customer website.
portal provider, notified us that they had discovered a vulnerability that we believe led to this incident,” .
It’s unclear what the vulnerability was.
“On August 17, 2022, this investigation determined that certain student loan account registration information was accessible by an unknown party beginning in June 2022 and ending on July 22, 2022,” .
Although customers’ most sensitive financial data was protected, the personal information that was accessed in the Nelnet breach “has potential to be leveraged in future social engineering and phishing campaigns,” explained Melissa Bischoping, endpoint security research specialist at Tanium, in a statement via email.
“With recent news of student loan forgiveness, it’s reasonable to expect the occasion to be used by scammers as a gateway for criminal activity,” Bischoping noted.
Last week, the Biden administration introduced a plan to cancel $10,000 of student loan debt for low- and middle-income loanees. She mentioned the loan forgiveness program will be used to lure victims into opening up phishing emails.
She warns that in the recent past breached data will be used to impersonate affected brands in waves of phishing campaigns targeting students and recent college graduates.
“Because they can leverage the trust from existing business relationships they can be particularly deceptive,” she wrote.
’s cybersecurity team “took immediate action to secure the information system, block the suspicious activity, fix the issue, and launched an investigation with third-party forensic experts to determine the nature and scope of the activity.”.
Remediation also included two years of free credit monitoring, credit reports and up to $1 million in identity theft insurance.
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Market Impact Analysis
Market Growth Trend
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.7% | 10.5% | 11.0% | 12.2% | 12.9% | 13.3% | 13.4% |
Quarterly Growth Rate
| Q1 2024 | Q2 2024 | Q3 2024 | Q4 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12.5% | 12.9% | 13.2% | 13.4% |
Market Segments and Growth Drivers
| Segment | Market Share | Growth Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Network Security | 26% | 10.8% |
| Cloud Security | 23% | 17.6% |
| Identity Management | 19% | 15.3% |
| Endpoint Security | 17% | 13.9% |
| Other Security Solutions | 15% | 12.4% |
Technology Maturity Curve
Different technologies within the ecosystem are at varying stages of maturity:
Competitive Landscape Analysis
| Company | Market Share |
|---|---|
| Palo Alto Networks | 14.2% |
| Cisco Security | 12.8% |
| Crowdstrike | 9.3% |
| Fortinet | 7.6% |
| Microsoft Security | 7.1% |
Future Outlook and Predictions
The Secure Google Blocked landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements, changing threat vectors, and shifting business requirements. Based on current trends and expert analyses, we can anticipate several significant developments across different time horizons:
Year-by-Year Technology Evolution
Based on current trajectory and expert analyses, we can project the following development timeline:
Technology Maturity Curve
Different technologies within the ecosystem are at varying stages of maturity, influencing adoption timelines and investment priorities:
Innovation Trigger
- Generative AI for specialized domains
- Blockchain for supply chain verification
Peak of Inflated Expectations
- Digital twins for business processes
- Quantum-resistant cryptography
Trough of Disillusionment
- Consumer AR/VR applications
- General-purpose blockchain
Slope of Enlightenment
- AI-driven analytics
- Edge computing
Plateau of Productivity
- Cloud infrastructure
- Mobile applications
Technology Evolution Timeline
- Technology adoption accelerating across industries
- digital transformation initiatives becoming mainstream
- Significant transformation of business processes through advanced technologies
- new digital business models emerging
- Fundamental shifts in how technology integrates with business and society
- emergence of new technology paradigms
Expert Perspectives
Leading experts in the cyber security sector provide diverse perspectives on how the landscape will evolve over the coming years:
"Technology transformation will continue to accelerate, creating both challenges and opportunities."
— Industry Expert
"Organizations must balance innovation with practical implementation to achieve meaningful results."
— Technology Analyst
"The most successful adopters will focus on business outcomes rather than technology for its own sake."
— Research Director
Areas of Expert Consensus
- Acceleration of Innovation: The pace of technological evolution will continue to increase
- Practical Integration: Focus will shift from proof-of-concept to operational deployment
- Human-Technology Partnership: Most effective implementations will optimize human-machine collaboration
- Regulatory Influence: Regulatory frameworks will increasingly shape technology development
Short-Term Outlook (1-2 Years)
In the immediate future, organizations will focus on implementing and optimizing currently available technologies to address pressing cyber security challenges:
- Technology adoption accelerating across industries
- digital transformation initiatives becoming mainstream
These developments will be characterized by incremental improvements to existing frameworks rather than revolutionary changes, with emphasis on practical deployment and measurable outcomes.
Mid-Term Outlook (3-5 Years)
As technologies mature and organizations adapt, more substantial transformations will emerge in how security is approached and implemented:
- Significant transformation of business processes through advanced technologies
- new digital business models emerging
This period will see significant changes in security architecture and operational models, with increasing automation and integration between previously siloed security functions. Organizations will shift from reactive to proactive security postures.
Long-Term Outlook (5+ Years)
Looking further ahead, more fundamental shifts will reshape how cybersecurity is conceptualized and implemented across digital ecosystems:
- Fundamental shifts in how technology integrates with business and society
- emergence of new technology paradigms
These long-term developments will likely require significant technical breakthroughs, new regulatory frameworks, and evolution in how organizations approach security as a fundamental business function rather than a technical discipline.
Key Risk Factors and Uncertainties
Several critical factors could significantly impact the trajectory of cyber security evolution:
Organizations should monitor these factors closely and develop contingency strategies to mitigate potential negative impacts on technology implementation timelines.
Alternative Future Scenarios
The evolution of technology can follow different paths depending on various factors including regulatory developments, investment trends, technological breakthroughs, and market adoption. We analyze three potential scenarios:
Optimistic Scenario
Rapid adoption of advanced technologies with significant business impact
Key Drivers: Supportive regulatory environment, significant research breakthroughs, strong market incentives, and rapid user adoption.
Probability: 25-30%
Base Case Scenario
Measured implementation with incremental improvements
Key Drivers: Balanced regulatory approach, steady technological progress, and selective implementation based on clear ROI.
Probability: 50-60%
Conservative Scenario
Technical and organizational barriers limiting effective adoption
Key Drivers: Restrictive regulations, technical limitations, implementation challenges, and risk-averse organizational cultures.
Probability: 15-20%
Scenario Comparison Matrix
| Factor | Optimistic | Base Case | Conservative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Implementation Timeline | Accelerated | Steady | Delayed |
| Market Adoption | Widespread | Selective | Limited |
| Technology Evolution | Rapid | Progressive | Incremental |
| Regulatory Environment | Supportive | Balanced | Restrictive |
| Business Impact | Transformative | Significant | Modest |
Transformational Impact
Technology becoming increasingly embedded in all aspects of business operations. This evolution will necessitate significant changes in organizational structures, talent development, and strategic planning processes.
The convergence of multiple technological trends—including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and ubiquitous connectivity—will create both unprecedented security challenges and innovative defensive capabilities.
Implementation Challenges
Technical complexity and organizational readiness remain key challenges. Organizations will need to develop comprehensive change management strategies to successfully navigate these transitions.
Regulatory uncertainty, particularly around emerging technologies like AI in security applications, will require flexible security architectures that can adapt to evolving compliance requirements.
Key Innovations to Watch
Artificial intelligence, distributed systems, and automation technologies leading innovation. Organizations should monitor these developments closely to maintain competitive advantages and effective security postures.
Strategic investments in research partnerships, technology pilots, and talent development will position forward-thinking organizations to leverage these innovations early in their development cycle.
Technical Glossary
Key technical terms and definitions to help understand the technologies discussed in this article.
Understanding the following technical concepts is essential for grasping the full implications of the security threats and defensive measures discussed in this article. These definitions provide context for both technical and non-technical readers.
endpoint security intermediate
API beginner
How APIs enable communication between different software systemsplatform intermediate
zero-day intermediate
Timeline showing vulnerability discovery to patch developmentSOC intermediate
malware beginner
Common malware types and their characteristicsphishing beginner
Anatomy of a typical phishing attackRelated Articles
