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Android is the most popular operating system with billions of active devices.Unfortunately, its popularity and openness makes it attractive for unwantedapps, i.e., malware and potentially unwanted programs (PUP). In Android, appinstallations typically happen via the official and alternative markets, butalso via other smaller and less understood alternative distribution vectorssuch as Web downloads, pay-per-install (PPI) services, backup restoration,bloatware, and IM tools. This work performs a thorough investigation onunwanted app distribution by quantifying and comparing distribution throughdifferent vectors. At the core of our measurements are reputation logs of alarge security vendor, which include 7.9M apps observed in 12M devices betweenJune and September 2019. As a first step, we measure that between 10% and 24%of users devices encounter at least one unwanted app, and compare theprevalence of malware and PUP. An analysis of the who-installs-whorelationships between installers and child apps reveals that the Play market isthe main app distribution vector, responsible for 87% of all installs and 67%of unwanted app installs, but it also has the best defenses against unwantedapps. Alternative markets distribute instead 5.7% of all apps, but over 10% ofunwanted apps. Bloatware is also a significant unwanted app distribution vectorwith 6% of those installs. And, backup restoration is an unintentionaldistribution vector that may even allow unwanted apps to survive users' phonereplacement. We estimate unwanted app distribution via PPI to be smaller thanon Windows. Finally, we observe that Web downloads are rare, but provide ariskier proposition even compared to alternative markets.

How Did That Get In My Phone? Unwanted App Distribution on Android Devices