What are they talking about?
My question, what are they talking about? After reading both the El Reg article, and the Arxan site, I can't tell.
By a "hacked" app, do they mean:
1) Exploits exist against an application, so unauthorized information can be retrieved from the application and phoned home to some naughty malware author?
2) The unauthorized copies of these applications have various malware added into them?
3) Just like cracked PC software; the "adding or modifying many attributes and behaviours that the app did not originally have, such as having security controls bypassed or unauthorised functions" means bypassing licensing checks and enabling the paid features you wouldn't get otherwise (in the case of apps with a free and feature-added pay version)?
Don't get me wrong, the software on offer from Arxan appears to be meant to harden Android apps, so it would likely help against all of those 3 scenarios (make it harder to exploit, harder to crack, and so harder to ship "malware added" versions of the software too.) But I'd be more worried about loads of exploitable apps than finding out that dodgey free versions of paid software exist (which honestly wouldn't surprise me much at all.)