Watch out, these malicious Android apps have been downloaded 42 million times - and could leave you seriously out of pocket

A major security investigation has analyzed 1.8 million Android apps available on the Google Play Store, focusing on those that explicitly claim AI features, and identified worrying security flaws which may be exposing secrets.

From the initial research pool, Cybernews researchers identified 38,630 Android AI apps and examined their internal code for exposed credentials and cloud service references, finding widespread data handling failures that extended far beyond isolated developer mistakes.

Overall, the researchers found nearly three-quarters (72%) of the analyzed Android AI apps contained at least one hardcoded secret embedded directly in application code - and on average, each affected app leaked 5.1 secrets.

Hardcoded secrets remain ...