Application Security Improvement Program helps fix over 1 million apps on Google Play
Google said in a blog post on Thursday that the five-year-old Android security program helped fix more than 1 million apps in the Play Store. When an app is submitted to the Google Play Store, members of the Application Security Improvement Program will scan for vulnerabilities. If there are no problems, the app will go into the normal beta phase before being displayed in the Play Store. If something goes wrong, the team will mark the application to the developer and help them fix it, and they will provide diagnostics and next steps.
So far, the program has helped more than 300,000 developers fix more than 1 million applications. Just last year, the program helped more than 30,000 developers fix more than 75,000 applications. The company wrote in a blog post, “Keeping Android users safe is important to Google. We know that app security is often tricky and that developers can make mistakes. We hope to see this program grow in the years to come, helping developers worldwide build apps users can truly trust.”
Continuously improve the functionality of the program by improving existing inspections and initiating inspections for more types of security vulnerabilities. In 2018, Google deployed warnings for six additional security vulnerability categories, including:
- SQL Injection
- File-based Cross-Site Scripting
- Cross-App Scripting
- Leaked Third-Party Credentials
- Scheme Hijacking
- JavaScript Interface Injection
