In the Avast company blog the results of the study of permissions requested by flashlight applications listed in the Google Play catalog for the Android platform. A total of 937 flashlights were found in the catalog, seven of which were identified as having malicious or unwanted activity, while the rest can be considered "clean." 408 applications requested 10 or fewer permissions, while 262 applications required consent for the provision of 50 or more permissions.
10 applications requested between 68 and 77 permissions, four of which were downloaded over a million times, two around 500 thousand times, and four around 100 thousand times.
NApplicationNumber of permissionsNumber of downloads
1 77100,0002 77100,0003 761,000,0004 76100,0005 76100,0006 741,000,0007 711,000,0008 70500,0009 681,000,00010 68500,000
In analyzing which permissions are requested by applications claiming flashlight functionality (not flashlight as an auxiliary function, but applications primarily positioning themselves only as flashlights), it was found that 77 applications request audio recording functions, 180 require reading data from the address book, 21 — access to write to the address book, 180 — ability to make calls, 131 — access to precise location, 63 — answer calls, 92 — make calls, 82 — receive SMS, 24 — upload data without notification.
282 programs require access to the force stop background processes function (this feature is assumed to be used to terminate processes to reduce power consumption). In fact, to operate the flashlight, only access to the camera flash LED is needed, and optionally the ability to prevent the device from going into sleep mode.
As an example, a typical flashlight application was analyzed, which claims only flashlight functionality and states that the application does not require additional permissions. In reality, however, the program requests 61 permissions, including the ability to make calls, read the address book, determine location, use Bluetooth, manage network connection status, obtain a list of installed applications, and read and write to external storage.
Source: opennet.ru
