Mobile Internet underground World: Channel trader tampering app profit

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Wen/Guxiaopo

App steals privacy, push advertising is nothing new, but in the user's mouth submerged developers, a part of the blame, maybe they do not know their own development of the app in doing such a thing, because this thing is not in fact they do.

A person in the industry to NetEase technology revealed that there are some Third-party application stores through the reverse-compiling means to tamper with the application, and then through the download billing or push ads, and other forms of profit, due to the operation of the secret, even a lot of developers themselves do not know.

Then many people in the industry with NetEase Technology confirmed the fact, but all said it is difficult to know who is doing these things, this is a secret underground world.

Android apps easily cracked channel to swap SDK ring money

After the popularity of PC Internet free software, the number of cracked is getting less and more, but on the mobile internet, this kind of story is being put on the back stage.

In some application shops appear "Cottage" application is not plagiarism, but will be the original application of the decompile, after tampering through their own channels live third party channels to the shelves.

Many in the Internet security Research and development industry personage said, such a crack is not difficult. "Students who have studied programming, just graduated after a two months of study, with a dedicated counter-compiling tool, you can easily crack a apk, and modify it." "said Zhigang, CEO of mobile security maker Bang Bang.

Using cracked apps, channel vendors have three ways to make money, 1, the software built-in advertising SDK is replaced by the application store their own advertising SDK, forced to earn advertising advertising costs; 2, add malicious code in the background secretly download app, after installation automatically delete, according to the number of activated charge promotion fee; 3, replace application payment system , point the payee to yourself, or add a script to the login system to steal the user account password.

Where the malicious code in the morning and other users do not pay attention to the time to download the app, secretly downloaded after installation in the background automatically deleted, the user itself does not know, but the channel can be in the way of CPA valuation by activating the amount of money to the developer, every activation of a mobile phone to earn two yuan The network is good, a mobile phone can be downloaded dozens of a night, and the user is completely unaware. and malicious code is usually not included in the pirated app, so they can easily through a variety of security monitoring, after the operation of automatic networking from the cloud to download malicious script, after the completion of the deletion of local data, to no shadow.

"At present, there are more than 1000 Android channels, some covert channels to download less than one time, many users may only download an application in this channel, but the total amount of accumulation is large." "Zhigang said.

One of China's third party application stores, a channel personnel revealed that do most of these channels are to do SP origin, they will go to download apk, through the bottom of the technology to crack, in their own channels to the shelves, or to crack the overseas stand-alone game put on a number of large channels to promote, and then push ads through these games.

"Sometimes one or two people can do such a network alliance, such as my own crack, you are an application store or website editor, you help me do promotion, I earned the money and you are divided." "The source said.

Mango Mobile Advertising Optimization Platform CEO Wang said that there were too many Android channels for developers to notice all the channels, and sometimes their applications were tampered with or pirated, exploited to do something illegal, and the developer might be the last to know.

Piracy applications flooding Android developers or yielding or tolerating

There are also a lot of tampering with the purpose of piracy, which usually happens in popular games.

July 2012, the Czech game developer Madfinger Games released the "Death of the Trigger" Android version announced free, before this game in Google Play for $0.99. The reason for it being free is not that no one is downloading the fees, but on the contrary, because of the popularity of piracy, developers are forced to be free--they didn't even have time to design an internal-purchase system.

Prior to the news that the U.S. game developers Appy Entertainment's game "FaceFighter Gold" in the Android platform piracy ratio is 70:1, that is, the average of every genuine download accompanied with 70 times of pirated downloads.

A technician told NetEase technology, if cracked apk source code, you can extract the resources, made into another game online, play the same as the original, such software is usually free download, through the implantation of ads or malicious code and other ways to profit. And some Third-party app stores are willing to tolerate such behavior in order to attract traffic and downloads.

Zhigang said, in fact, in the domestic software cracking and piracy is not too much risk, because if a developer to find, the channel can be divided with them, most developers will not be prosecuted, if the lawsuit, will not get too much compensation.

At the same time, Wang said, many developers have chosen to tolerate piracy, often because piracy has not caused too much damage to themselves.

It is understood that the various problems caused by cracking and tampering in the jailbreak iOS market is also frequent, but mostly still focused on the Android platform. Android's open ecology has led to problems such as piracy and cracking, opening up as the biggest advantage of Android, it has become its biggest disadvantage, Google can be closed to eliminate this disadvantage, but its advantages are gone.

The size of the secretive industry chain is unknown, the impact is not very large, the Android platform is now unlimited, the soaring numbers have changed these hidden ills, but after the crazy growth into the rational period, this cancer may have been difficult to gouge out.