https://threatpost.com/scanner-finds-malicious-android-apps-at-scale/114438
Using their scanner, the researchers found potentially harmful apps in 33 Android markets worldwide including Google Play. More than one million apps were scanned and 100,000 potentially malicious apps were uncovered, the researchers said, including almost 20 containing exploits for zero-days.
In Google Play, the researchers said 7.6 percent of the 400,000 apps they scanned in the market were malicious, a number that contradicts Google’s recent numbers in its Android Security Report that said 0.1 percent of apps were malicious. The biggest offenders were four Chinese Android marketplaces: Anzhi (39 percent of apps scanned were malicious); Yidong (36 percent); yy138 (28 percent); and Anfen (23 percent). Some of the malicious behaviors exhibited by some of the apps, the researchers said, put user privacy at risk or were profit-motivated, i.e., premium SMS scams.