Android mobile app piracy survey in 2015

Pirated APPs have always been a cancer that affects the healthy development of mobile Internet. They not only pose a threat to user privacy and tariffs, but also seriously affect the brand image and promotion effect of genuine APPs, and infringe on the rights and interests of genuine APP developers.
In 2015, Android mobile app piracy was still rampant, with an average of 92.7 pirated copies for every legitimate app. Among the pirated software apps, system tool apps had the highest average number of pirated copies, with an average of 324.2 pirated copies for every legitimate app. Among the pirated game apps, simulation and auxiliary apps had the highest average number of pirated copies, with an average of 228.6 pirated copies for every legitimate game.
Among the pirated software apps, the number of devices infected by pirated convenience life apps is the largest, at 237,878; the number of devices infected by pirated system security apps is 138,037; and the number of devices infected by pirated audio and video apps is 116,856.
Among the pirated game apps, the number of devices infected by business strategy apps was the largest, at 146,103; the number of devices infected by casual puzzle apps was 137,003; and the number of devices infected by parkour and racing apps was 83,650.
Facing the serious problem of app piracy, 360 Security Protection, as a leading mobile app security service platform in China, provides one-stop security services for mobile developers, aiming to build a professional and comprehensive mobile app security service system to promote the healthy development of mobile Internet security.

As an important carrier for promoting the development of mobile Internet, mobile applications have penetrated into all areas of people's lives and have therefore become the target of crackers. Due to the large number of domestic Android application markets, the review mechanisms and management standards of each application market vary greatly, causing many users to inadvertently download pirated applications that are implanted with malicious programs. Once users install such applications, they will be harassed by spam and advertisements at best, and at worst, they will suffer from privacy information leakage, malicious deductions, traffic loss and other hazards. Malicious pirated applications not only undermine user information security and damage the legitimate interests of users, but also directly affect the brand image and promotion effect of genuine applications, causing huge commercial value losses to genuine application developers.
As a leading mobile application security protection platform in China, 360 Jiagubao conducted a comprehensive monitoring and analysis of piracy in major Android application markets and third-party download channels in 2015. From the 19 application categories in the 360 ​​Mobile Assistant Market, 1% of the samples were drawn from high to low according to the download volume, totaling 10,305 genuine apps, of which 7,915 were software apps, accounting for 77%; and 2,390 were game apps, accounting for 23%.
In this survey report, pirated apps refer to apps that are signed by the official version of 360 Mobile Assistant, with the same package name but a different signature. Malicious pirated apps refer to apps that are infected with viruses. Malicious pirated apps usually involve malicious deductions, privacy theft, fraud and extortion, and other destructive behaviors, which can cause serious damage to users' finances and privacy.
The number of pirated signatures is a professional statistic involved in this survey. The digital signature of an application is an identifier of the developer's identity, and the signatures of different developers (if the signature is not leaked) are different. When an app is tampered with, its digital signature will inevitably change. The number of pirated signatures refers to the number of pirated signatures of an application in addition to the genuine signature.
The results of piracy monitoring and analysis show that the number of pirated apps corresponding to the 10,305 genuine apps is as high as 954,986, of which software pirated apps account for 83% and game pirated apps account for 17%.

From the average number of pirated copies per genuine app, there are 92.7 pirated apps and 1.7 pirated signatures for each genuine app. Among them, there are 100.6 pirated apps and 1.9 pirated signatures for each genuine software app, and 66.4 pirated apps and 1.1 pirated signatures for each genuine game app.

There is also a certain relationship between the number of downloads of a genuine APP and the number of pirated copies. The figure below shows the distribution of downloads of 10,305 popular genuine APPs on 360 Mobile Assistant. The results show that the number of genuine APPs with downloads between 100,000 and 100,000 is the largest, most of which are developed by developers of medium-sized enterprises, and most of them are games and entertainment applications. Although the number of genuine APPs with downloads of more than 10 million is relatively small, their downloads are very large, and most of them are essential APPs for installation, such as system tools and convenient life.

The following figure shows the relationship between the number of legitimate apps downloaded and the number of pirated apps. The results show that the greater the number of legitimate apps downloaded, the greater the number of pirated apps. When the number of legitimate apps downloaded exceeds 10 million, the number of pirated apps will rapidly increase by hundreds. Even for small and medium-sized legitimate apps with downloads below 100,000, the average number of pirated apps is 39.4, which shows the seriousness of the harm caused by piracy.

Software apps are divided into 10 categories, among which convenient life, office study, news reading, and audio-visual apps are most closely integrated with people's lives and account for a relatively high proportion. In addition to pirated apps' special preference for popular apps, the number of pirated apps of different types of apps is also different due to factors such as profit and ease of dissemination. The following figure shows the relationship between the number of genuine and pirated software of different types in this survey.
It can be seen that the number of pirated system tools and convenient life apps is the largest, accounting for 27% and 20% of the total pirated software respectively; followed by audio and video 12%; and communication and social networking 10%.
Judging from the average number of pirated copies of a single software, system tool apps have the highest average number of pirated copies, with an average of 324.2 pirated copies for each genuine app; followed by communication and social networking apps with 137.9; audio and video apps with 118.5; shopping and financial management apps with 113.1; the average number of pirated copies of office and study apps is relatively small, at 44.4.

The high average number of pirated system tool apps is closely related to the development of mobile Internet. Due to the rapid popularization of smartphones and mobile Internet, people's demand for the use of wireless WiFi networks has increased, so WiFi connection and WiFi password query apps are very popular. Secondly, the application market is a comprehensive platform for collecting APP downloads, which is a must-have for every smartphone. Therefore, this type of APP has become the type with the most pirated APPs due to strong user demand and wide dissemination. Among the popular system tool apps, the ones with the most serious piracy problems include: RE manager rootexplorer, Antutu review, Xiaomi App Store, UC browser, WiFi Master Key, etc. Among them, the number of pirated "WiFi Master Key", which is the most well-known to users, reached 3,336, which is staggering.

2015 was the year of the explosion of mobile payment, which has become the mainstream today. Among the popular shopping and financial management apps, the problem of piracy is particularly prominent. The apps with the most piracy are: Meituan, Palm Life, China Merchants Bank, Money Saver and No.1 Store, among which the popular app "Meituan" has 1,697 pirated apps.

The most pirated apps in the convenient life category include: Memo Wizard, Barcode Scanner, Chinese Calendar, Flashlight, Personal Signature and Screen Name. Among them, the number of pirated apps of Memo Wizard is 16,403, which is an astonishing number.

Audio-visual apps are also one of the most popular types of applications used by users. The apps with the largest number of pirated apps include: Music Player, Rockbox Music Player, Tiantian Dongting, Lekan Audio and Video Player, and 100tv Video Player.

The research report also analyzed the number of devices infected by pirated software apps, among which the number of devices infected by pirated convenient life apps was the largest, at 237,878; followed by the number of devices infected by pirated system security apps, at 138,037; and again, the number of devices infected by pirated audio and video apps, at 116,856.

The number of pirated games varies by game type. The following figure shows the relationship between the number of legitimate games and pirated games in 9 different categories. It can be seen that the number of pirated games in the casual puzzle category is the largest, accounting for 44% of the total number of pirated games; followed by parkour and racing, accounting for 15%; and puzzle adventure, accounting for 12%.
Judging from the average number of pirated copies of a single game, simulation and auxiliary games have the highest average number of pirated copies, with an average of 228.6 pirated copies for each genuine game; followed by business strategy games with 153.7 pirated copies; action shooting games with 117.9 pirated copies; and parkour racing games with 101.3 pirated copies.

Among popular casual puzzle apps, the ones with the most serious piracy problems are: Flappy Bird, Taiko no Tatsujin (official revision), Fruit Ninja, PopStar! PopStar Chinese version and Fishing Master Gold, among which the number of pirated copies of "Flappy Bird" is as high as 7,158.

Among the popular parkour and racing apps this year, the ones with the most pirated copies are: Subway Surfers - (Tokyo Edition), Hill Climb Racing, Moto X, Temple Run 2: Oz, and Despicable Me: Minion Rush. Among them, "Subway Surfers - (Tokyo Edition)" has the most pirated copies, at 1,497.

Among the pirated game apps, the number of devices infected by business strategy apps was the largest, at 146,103; followed by casual puzzle apps, which infected 137,003 devices; and then parkour and racing apps, which infected 83,650 devices.

There are numerous Android application markets in China, but the review mechanisms and management standards of the application markets vary greatly, resulting in some pirated apps being listed on mainstream application markets, which are difficult for users to identify and are widely spread.
In view of the 954,986 pirated apps found in this survey, we investigated their listing in mainstream application markets, and found that 51,781, or 5.4%, of the pirated apps were listed and circulated in mainstream channels, mainly video players, browsers, racing games, calendars, and reading apps.

Of the 127,011 malicious pirated apps found in this survey, 14,476 were found in mainstream channels, or 11.4% of them were listed in mainstream application markets. Since malicious pirated apps usually have malicious deductions, steal privacy and other destructive behaviors, once they are listed and spread in mainstream application markets, they will cause greater harm to users' economic and privacy security.

Malicious pirated apps usually contain viruses, which can cause serious damage to users' property and privacy. In this survey, 127,011 malicious pirated apps were found and their characteristics were analyzed. Trojan-type pirated apps accounted for the highest proportion, accounting for 71%, followed by advertising-type apps, accounting for 26%. Advertisement-type pirated apps mainly use interstitial and push notifications.

An analysis of the most harmful Trojan-type malicious pirated apps shows that the highest proportion of privacy theft is 42%. This type of malicious pirated app will steal the user's payment account and password, files and pictures in the phone and other information, which will pose a serious threat to the user's privacy; the second is malicious deduction behavior, accounting for 28%. This type of malicious pirated app will privately send text messages and deduction instructions without the user's permission, causing losses to the user's mobile phone charges; the third is fee consumption behavior, accounting for 26%. This type of malicious pirated app will automatically make calls, send text messages, MMS, emails, frequently connect to the network, etc. without the user's knowledge or authorization, causing the user to lose the fee.

Pirated apps have seriously affected the healthy development of the mobile Internet industry. In response to the current chaos of pirated apps in China, 360 Jiagu (//jiagu.360.cn/), as a leading mobile application security service platform in China, provides one-stop security services for mobile developers. 360 Jiagu focuses on application reinforcement and integrates value-added services such as piracy monitoring, crash log analysis, data analysis, and application upgrade notifications. It helps developers improve application security while keeping track of the daily operation and data status of apps.
360 Hardening Protection's application hardening technology can effectively prevent APP from being reverse analyzed, decompiled, and repackaged, and prevent it from being embedded with various viruses, advertisements and other malicious codes.
In order to help developers find pirated apps in time, 360 Security Protection has launched a piracy monitoring service. The piracy monitoring service covers major Android application markets at home and abroad, and provides data such as the number of pirated apps, download addresses of pirated samples, and their impact range.
Crash log analysis and data analysis services can monitor the operating status of the hardened APP, providing important data support for developers to quickly locate crash problems and optimize products.
At present, more and more mobile developers choose to use 360 ​​Security Protection. By the end of 2015, 360 Security Protection had provided security protection services for more than 400,000 mobile applications, covering more than 800 million mobile phone users, and has become the leader in the domestic mobile application security service industry. 360 Security Protection aims to create a professional and comprehensive mobile application security service system to promote the healthy development of mobile Internet security.