<story><title>Barcode scanner app on Google Play infects 10M users with one update</title><url>https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2021/02/barcode-scanner-app-on-google-play-infects-10-million-users-with-one-update/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wooptoo</author><text>This is possibly tied to the recent assault on the ZXing Barcode scanner app[1].&lt;p&gt;This is a legit open source app that&amp;#x27;s been recently flooded by 1-star reviews claiming that the app contains malware, probably in order to get users to switch to the other apps.
The funny thing is this app has not been updated since 2019 on the Play Store, so those reviews are clearly bogus.&lt;p&gt;It takes a special kind of scum to slander an open source project in order to push malware.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;play.google.com&amp;#x2F;store&amp;#x2F;apps&amp;#x2F;details?id=com.google.zxing.client.android&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;play.google.com&amp;#x2F;store&amp;#x2F;apps&amp;#x2F;details?id=com.google.zxi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bityard</author><text>The ZXing Barcode Scanner (which is the &amp;quot;official barcode&amp;#x2F;QR code scanner for Android, as far as _I_ am concerned) is also available on f-droid.org. There&amp;#x27;s no absolute guarantee that F-Droid apps are malware-free but they have at least been looked at by a competent team of humans, something that is not true of the Play Store.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;f-droid.org&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;packages&amp;#x2F;com.google.zxing.client.android&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;f-droid.org&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;packages&amp;#x2F;com.google.zxing.client.andr...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Barcode scanner app on Google Play infects 10M users with one update</title><url>https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2021/02/barcode-scanner-app-on-google-play-infects-10-million-users-with-one-update/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wooptoo</author><text>This is possibly tied to the recent assault on the ZXing Barcode scanner app[1].&lt;p&gt;This is a legit open source app that&amp;#x27;s been recently flooded by 1-star reviews claiming that the app contains malware, probably in order to get users to switch to the other apps.
The funny thing is this app has not been updated since 2019 on the Play Store, so those reviews are clearly bogus.&lt;p&gt;It takes a special kind of scum to slander an open source project in order to push malware.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;play.google.com&amp;#x2F;store&amp;#x2F;apps&amp;#x2F;details?id=com.google.zxing.client.android&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;play.google.com&amp;#x2F;store&amp;#x2F;apps&amp;#x2F;details?id=com.google.zxi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>curtis3389</author><text>I knew nothing of ZXing Barcode Scanner other than it was super simple and &amp;quot;just works.&amp;quot; Nice to know that it&amp;#x27;s open source! I&amp;#x27;ve been happily using on all my android phones since I started with the HTC Dream so many years ago.</text></comment>