Bugs found in backend systems of top 5,000 free Android apps

NEW YORK: Cybersecurity researchers have identified more than 1,600 vulnerabilities in the support ecosystem behind the top 5,000 free apps available in the Google Play Store.

While the researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and The Ohio State University studied only applications in the Google Play Store, applications designed for iOS may share the same backend systems.

The vulnerabilities were found in the backend systems that feed content and advertising to smartphone applications through a network of Cloud-based servers.