How a bunch of angry hackers helped convince Google to let a banned app back in its app store
CybraryA sample lesson on Cybrary.Two days before Thanksgiving, Ryan Corey received some unexpected and troubling news in his inbox: Google had banned his app, Cybrary, from the Google Play Store.
The free app, which teaches cybersecurity, had racked up over 50,000 downloads since its release in late October.
But now a Google form email declared the app was in violation of the company's "Developer Distribution Agreement," and it had been suspended.
Corey tried not to panic.
He shot off an email to Google asking them to explain exactly what he and his team had done wrong. The response he got was more specific, but equally formulaic. Google told him that Cybrary was potentially helping its users "circumvent" hardware or software - in a word: hacking.
How he got unblocked
In hindsight, Corey says he should have known this could happen. When he looked at the developer agreement, he found Google was right. By the strict letter of Google's laws, Cybrary should be kicked out of the Play Store.
"One third of the skill set of the cybersecurity industry is what we call 'penetration testing,' or hacking," Corey explains. To know how to protect yourself or the software you build against hackers, you have to understand hacking. This intuitively makes sense. But from Google's perspective, the skills Cybrary was teaching could be used to hack others, plain and simple.
In multiple emails, Corey tried to explain his position to Google. "This is what is taught around the world. This is what Obama is talking about when he's saying we need to ramp up cybersecurity education," Corey says.
Google refused to engage with him in anything beyond form emails. They said he could submit an entirely new app culled of the objectionable content, but this would not only gut the teaching materials, but also cause more than 1,000 reviews to evaporate into thin air.
CybarayGoogle's explanation of the ban.
Luckily Corey knew a vocal group of people who were apt to become enraged at any hint of censorship by a behemoth tech company: his users. Corey published a blog post that implored Cybrary fans to speak out on Twitter if they wanted to see the app come back.
Corey was flooded with over 5,000 notifications in a few hours. "There were a lot of curse words," he chuckles. "This is censorship, this is BS. A lot of people probably had their own biases against Google because of the tracking of personal information."
The gambit worked. Google contacted him and said his app had been passed up the chain for further review. Then suddenly Corey found that Cybrary had been reinstated. Google asked him to change a bit of wording on the description, to take out the word hacking and a few sentences that could have implied malicious intent. But the actual educational content got to stay, he says.
CybraryCybrary cofounder Ryan Corey.Corey was relieved. "You can't strip penetration testing from cybersecurity education," he says. "You need to understand an SQL injection attack, or a 'man in the middle' attack."
Cybrary may be back in the store, Corey worries about what could have happened if his company hadn't already had a robust community of users from its online service.
"If our whole company was based on the launch of this app, and we didn't have the web-based platform, our startup would be dead." He worries for other app creators.
"I didn't get an explanation"
The problem, as Corey sees it, is the rigidity of Google's system. They were polite, he says, but unwilling to listen to any reasoning. It was more of a math problem than a conversation. They had to copy and paste the "right" answer when he asked a certain question.
There was no room for nuance, so while Google's terms of service pretty clearly forbid the teaching of "penetration testing," banning an "educational" app isn't a great PR move. And it seems to have taken an army of angry Twitter users to make Google realize that.
CybraryCorey says he's astounded that even after the app was reinstated, Google wouldn't have an actual dialogue with him.
"I didn't get an explanation," he says.
He wants one, since he recognizes that the situation is complicated. Some of the things Cybrary teaches could certainly be used maliciously. And he doesn't know quite where he stands with Google.
"If we didn't have really angry hackers who hate censorship behind us, our app would have never made it back up," Corey says.
This is a strange contradiction. Corey's app was pulled because it could teach people to hack, and then it was reinstated after a bunch of hackers yelled at Google on Twitter.
But Corey has no idea what Google actually thinks about the situation and about the gray area of cybersecurity, he says.
For its part, Google provided Business Insider with this comment on the situation:
"We can confirm that Cybrary is available again on Google Play. We worked very closely with the developer to resolve the situation and ensure that the app was in compliance with our policies. Unfortunately, we can't share any additional details."