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Re: [LUG] OT Android av.

 

On Tuesday 02 May 2017 20:02:50 Tom via list wrote:
> My daughters Amazon Fire is infected with track4track2you app - which I
> think I need to put it into safe more and delete the app to get rid of
> it but just wondering if there is any useful form of free av for android?


Depends what you think is useful. 

Pretty much the same applies to Android as an OS, do you keep it up to date, 
do you only install from the authorised repositories.

How did the malware get on the device?

The anti-malware split is interesting, and the premium offerings are 
demonstrably better at spotting malicious apps, but I don't think the 
situation is so bad that anti-malware will improve defence much over good 
practice. Because you are basically betting that the AV vendor will do a 
better job than the people in charge of Google's Play Store.

The recent Microsoft malware scanner debacle is a good example of why anti-
malware can be double edged, having exposed the whole of the Windows world to 
risk of easy compromise (and that will keep giving opportunities to attackers 
till Microsoft harden their anti-malware environment).

In the case of the mobile anti-malware it is probably slightly less risky, but 
you typically still exposing browsing habits, installed apps, and maybe other 
personal data in exchange for a list of bad applications which is almost 
certainly almost identical to the one Google is using. We see a similar thing 
with trying to block bad websites, which the browser folk have taken over from 
the anti-malware people.

In the mobile world because the mobile vendors have typically been quite good 
at the OS level on isolation, the traditional anti-malware vendors have tended 
to App reputation work. So there are a bunch of tools which will tell you 
exactly what you are giving up to use Facebook, or Twitter, or any other App, 
both based on permissions but also actual behaviour of the app, although 
malicious apps may not trigger until they are on a suitable target device.

In the Enterprise market there are some really interesting offerings, with 
really interesting price tags, I imagine the banks love them.



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