Google Play store app uploads stalled by hacker

A Turkish hacker has claimed responsibility for an attack that's stopped developers across the globe uploading new apps and updates to the Google Play store.

The attack is reported to have blighted the store's Developer Console publishing system on Sunday and Monday, and prevented new apps and updates from being rolled out to Android users.

At the time of writing, the issue appeared to have been fixed, but is thought to have affected developers around the world intermittently for the past two days.

According to a report on CNN Money, the downtime is the handiwork of Turkish hacker Ibrahim Balic, and was caused by his attempts to test a vulnerability he discovered in the console.

Balic told the site he wrote an app to exploit the vulnerability, but didn't expect other developers to be affected by it.

"I didn't have any malicious aim. I am so sorry for this damage," he told the site.

"I just wanted to be sure about [the] vulnerability."

At the time of writing, Google had not commented on the outage or vulnerability, despite Balic's claim to have notified them about it.

Despite this, Balic said he's certain his actions are responsible for preventing the Developer Console from working properly, as it went offline shortly after he tried to upload his app.

"I wasn't sure until today. But now I am really sure because Google fixed [the] issue 30 minutes ago. After I upload malformed APK again, the service shutdown," he told readers on social news site Reddit.