Android antivirus apps a complete waste of time

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/104827-android-antivirus-apps-are-useless-heres-what-to-do-instead

by ukdm • 15 years ago

33 26 15 years ago

a2tech• 15 years ago

Just like desktop AV?

bni• 15 years ago

Exactly, the same points made in this article applies to Windows aswell. Maybe Windows AV will be a few points better, but who cares? It gives users an equally dangerous false sense of security.

Yet, lots of people (both techs and non-techs) will think you are crazy if you dont use AV on your Windows PC. Its some sort of mass psycosis.

randomdata3• 15 years ago

Yeah, I never understood the purpose of anti-virus software. If you have a vulnerability that would allow a virus to make its way onto the machine enough for a virus scanner to find the virus, someone will use that same vulnerability to access your system in a way that a virus scanner will not protect you.

someone13• 15 years ago

I think you unfairly characterize a lot of Windows AV. Yeah, they're not perfect - if you're browsing dodgy sites, downloading tons of cracks, and clicking on every link, there's no application on Earth that can stop you from getting infected.

However, an AV is pretty good at detecting stuff that you may get exposed to otherwise - exploits can pwn your Windows computer without you even knowing, and sometimes even run off legit ad networks. NoScript / AdBlock, running Google Chrome, and practicing safe browsing can help, but an AV is a good additional layer.

I guess my point is - an AV is NOT a panacea, but it should be used as an additional layer of defence.

CWuestefeld3• 15 years ago

This isn't exactly the conclusion of the test it's reporting. That test said that free Android AV apps were poor-to-useless. But they included two commercial apps in the test, which fared pretty well (although not perfect).

tehwalrus• 15 years ago

hmm, it also mentions completely disabling 3rd party software sources, and not downloading stupid things from forums.

If you're developing for android, you're going to install your own APKs from sd card. Even if you "don't install other apps" that way, you're still "leaving the vector open" by leaving the system setting on, apparently?

Also, if you want to upgrade the OS or kernel on some of the cheaper phones, you'll need to use cyanogenmod, and usually a custom version hacked together by randomers on forums. My (cheap, spare) droid runs a bootloader and OS which is the result of collaboration between a Chinese guy, a British guy and other developers from "the internet". You do have to join the forums, talk to people a bit, and read up on the feedback these users get when they post new ROMs though, I'll admit...

Maybe I'll install one of these free AV apps and see if they can find anything! :)

DanielBMarkham• 15 years ago

I had an odd thought reading this article. I wonder if what might be considered malware could actually be a legitimate agreement between the user and the programmer?

Something like "Instead of a subscription, I'm going to SMS these 3 numbers once a month and it's going to cost you five bucks"

This actually might bypass all the headaches folks are having with merchant accounts and payment plans and work out as something both the user and developer might like a lot better. If crooks can make millions charging for bogus SMS messages, why can't legitimate programmers use the same payment mechanism for stuff the users like?

Don't know. Just throwing it out there. What caught my eye was the assumption that any program using SMS to rack up charges was malware. Is that always a true statement?

rsynnott2• 15 years ago

> If crooks can make millions charging for bogus SMS messages, why can't legitimate programmers use the same payment mechanism for stuff the users like?

This exists; you see it occasionally for web games.

It's quite expensive, though, and I suspect it's not allowed on Android if you're in the marketplace; does Google allow you to use third-party payment stuff for marketplace apps?

bostonvaulter2• 15 years ago

Some apps use a separate paypal link that avoids the market.

eogas2• 15 years ago

>...but by far the best way to avoid malware infestation is to use a little common sense...

Also, people should stop wearing seatbelts, and just start driving better.

martey• 15 years ago

That's a poor analogy.

It's difficult to get infected with Android malware without directly installing questionable applications on your phone, but it is pretty easy to get into an accident through no fault of your own.

eogas2• 15 years ago

I think you (and the author) give the average user too much credit. To most people on HN, it's probably pretty obvious that downloading applications directly from sketchy sources is a good way to have your device become infected by malware, but the average user might not realize this. They might not even realize that a source is sketchy.

This is anecdotal, but after about the 10th time reinstalling my parents OS, I finally discovered that the root of all their malware-related problems stemmed from the fact that they were downloading music using Limewire. It hadn't crossed their minds that perhaps this was not a very good idea.

I'm sure they genuinely believed that their computer was repeatedly being infected "through no fault of their own".

ricardobeat• 15 years ago

The paid apps blocked all malware apps from being installed, even those that were not spotted in the manual scans.

How does that make them useless?

This is one of the key advantages of the iOS App Store - the process of analyzing app capabilities and security is offloaded to Apple - users don't have to care about it.

MichaelGagnon• 15 years ago

These results are unsurprising to me. But then again, my startup is building a cloud-based mobile-malware detection service to address the inherent limitations of anti-virus on mobile devices. :-)

Here's the problem: "Anti-virus" in general is limited because it relies on static signatures. Therefore it can only detect known malware and is vulnerable to evasion (polymorphism / metamorphism). On mobile devices AV is even more limited because of resource constraints (namely, limited battery and cpu).

By doing malware detection in the cloud, we have plentiful resources to do heavyweight analyses. We also get a better overall detection capability by using behavioral analyses instead of just static signatures (we actually run the apps).

If you're curious about the technical details, we presented at Black Hat in August. https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Daswani/BH_US_11_Daswani...

P.S. We’re hiring :-)

dpcan• 15 years ago

I've been running AVG for a month now on my Android and actually don't mind it. It doesn't appear to be draining my battery or affecting performance, and I like the thought that should I download something from the Market that IS in their database, it may catch it before I install. Even if it is a 1 in 10 shot.

ctdonath2• 15 years ago

As an avid iOS user, this is causing much head-scratching a la "viruses are a problem on Android? why? it's 2011..."

esrauch• 15 years ago

http://www.mostiwant.com/blog/virusbarrier-ios-first-antivir...

ctdonath2• 15 years ago

Quote therein: "there is no known malware for iOS".

This thing just sniffs for malware whose transmission vector may by coincidence pass thru an iOS device, like PDFs and Dropbox.

Android antivirus apps a complete waste of time

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