VERY IMPORTANT

Recently, we’ve been noticing ever more dubious advertising libraries in popular apps on Google Play. The monetization methods used in such SDKs can pose a threat to users, yet they pull in more revenue for developers than whitelisted ad modules due to the greater number of views. In this post we will look into a few examples of suspicious-looking ad modules that we discovered in popular apps earlier this year. One of the applications we researched was a popular app that allows users to ask questions anonymously. Integrated into the code of an earlier version of the app was the module com.haskfm.h5mob. Its task was to show intrusive advertising (in breach of the Google Play rules) when the user unlocked the phone.