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Google Starts Scanning Android Apps
eldavojohn writes "A recent blog post has Android developers talking about Google finally scanning third party applications for malware. Oddly enough, Google claims this service (codenamed 'Bouncer') has been active for some time: 'The service has been looking for malicious apps in Market for a while now, and between the first and second halves of 2011, we saw a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market. This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise.' So it appears that they allow the software to be sold even before it is scanned and it also appears that no one has been bitten by a false positive from this software. Apparently Bouncer is not as oppressive as Apple's solution although given recent news its effectiveness must be questioned. Have any readers had their apps flagged or pulled by Bouncer?"
It is good that they are going to finally scan for malware. But in the end Android apps need better quality control. There are so many poorly-written apps with memory leaks. I end up having to reboot my Android at least 1x/day for no explainable reason. Android is really neat but I feel like it is one big beta test that I paid money to use.
Does that mean that app like ROM manager or Titanium Backup will be wiped away, considered as viruses because they need root access to work ?
...a more fine-grained security model and a firewall to android?
I understand it's a problem for Google if users can suddenly notice how much
is transferred to Google but I think it's the only way to go in the end.
You figured something like this would have been in place from day one. Let's sell apps, but not worry about if they are loaded malware or viruses. /facepalm
I chose Maemo over Android too, unfortunately we're a small minority even among geeks, I think I'm going to try to hack Maemo or some other GNU/Linux distro onto a Droid 4 for my next phone.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The fact that Nokia (actually, Elop) is too stupid to sell N9 in all the markets (it's not available in Italy, e.g., except imported more or less legally from e.g. Switzerland) and the fact that the N9 is essentially the end-of-line product for Harmattan are two strong reasons that have strongly limited the sales of that fine product.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Please stop. Don't continue to talk about FOSS if you're going to sound this stupid. You make the rest of us look bad.
This is utter nonsense. Look at Ubuntu which is certainly FOSS. Does that mean no proprietary code will run on it? Of course not. Check out their own market- lots of applications are for sale as binary-only. Disallowing those, or any other business model a developer/publisher wants to employ is not best left up to Ubuntu, or Google. That should be the user's choice.
If you choose to run only open source, that's your right. But if that's the case you're a fanatic on the fringe of society, and nobody agrees with you.
Turns out the malware was more like adware. http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/293699-symantec-retracts-android-malware-claims-to-align-with-lookout
Why do you say that kernel is a distant relative? I was under the impression that little had changed outside the driver model.
grape - the GNU free, open source rape
So it appears that they allow the software to be sold even before it is scanned and it also appears that no one has been bitten by a false positive from this software.
Why does it 'appear' that they allow the software to be sold even before it is scanned? It could be true but it doesn't seem to follow from anything else that was said. It sounds as if it scans items that "are in the market" but that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't scanned before they go into the market, just that they continue to be scanned as the scanning techniques improve/change.
Why does it 'appear' that no one has been bitten by a false positive? I don't see anything that could lead to that conclusion.
Either or both of those statements could be true, but just sticking "It appears" in front of them without explanation is ridiculous.
At this point they're completely incompatible with each other, so I'd say they're roughly as distant as the Linux and BSD kernels.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Because not many people can get an N9? Nokia isn't selling it in the US. Honestly, MeGo and WebOS are better than Android, the problem is you can't get them except on a small handful of devices while I can get Android on every major network for a subsidized price plus it comes in every hardware form factor I'd need/want.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I love maemo too, and love my n900. It makes me sort of sad to think my next phone will *not* run maemo.
However, people are free to use whatever they like, even if it *is* crap, locked-down, etc.
The real solution is to educate a wee bit in order for them to be able to choose a bit more wisely.
Was the app developed in the Republic of China? Reject. That solves most of the problem. I have my own filter for apps, one that is based on cultural bias and animosity towards Chinese software mills: If the description is written by an idiot, or the obvious result of machine translation: reject If the 'reviews' are spam or are the typical 'ITS SO ADDICTING!': reject
In Java, the only resource guaranteed to be garbage-collected is unreachable memory. Other resources are not, such as database connections, network connections, open files, and open graphics drawing contexts. There is something called finalize() that's supposed to run when an object is GC'd, but finalizers aren't guaranteed to run at all. The ordinary workaround for the lack of any deterministic finalization (like C++ destructors or C# IDisposable or CPython __del__) is to wrap anything that accesses such a resource in a try...finally block, but unlike in C++ where a destructor can't throw, close() in Java can and often does throw IOException. What should one do after having caught an IOException in close()? Add the object to a static ArrayList<Closeable> and keep trying to close it every 15 seconds?
Nonsense. There are plenty of fanatics on the fringe of society that agree with him.
because nobody's bitched about it on any dev forums? vs. the amount of people who have bitched about being pulled from apple store with a legit app.
"it appears" is there exactly for that it's just appears so, that it might not be so, but for he time being it seems so.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In Argentina we don't usually get the latest phones, and the N900 never officially arrived (imported in the same maner as you described).
The N9, however, is officially imported, sold by several carriers, and has ads on TV, which really surprises me, specially in comparison to what you say happes in Italy.
This is flat out bullshit.
http://www.muktware.com/news/3273/linux-33-will-let-you-boot-android-greg-kh
Linux 3.3 will allow you to boot Android unmodified.
Well forgive me for being a day or two behind on the bleeding-edge development news.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The uproar over native apps forced them to rush the release of the SDK, rush to opening of the App Store review system, etc
No it didn't. Anyone who programmed the original SDK knew it had been planned to be released all along, there was way too much material for it to have been a rush job. Also at first app store submissions didn't take that long, it was only later when demand went bonkers they really started to be overloaded.
Poor Apple Haters, can't even revise history correctly...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Looks like I've got a Mac fanboy with their pants all twisted in a knot.
This whole discussion is about Android phones. I replied to a message where the person did not understand that Android phones can tether without installing apps or rooting, etc. I explained that this functionality is built into the Android OS.
I did not mean to ignore or cast aspersion on the sacred iPhone which I understand also has the ability to tether (I think since version 4.3). I apologize for not including the sacred iPhone in my original posting but I hope that this message will clarify the situation. (And I am sure you will correct me if I am wrong.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Looks like I've got a Mac fanboy with their pants all twisted in a knot.
I was simply posting a fact, as your post implied other platforms might not support tethering. How you chose to interpret that is, literally, your problem.
I replied to a message where the person did not understand that Android phones can tether without installing apps or rooting, etc.
Like most Android users, you seem to have rather a burr up your butt when anything negative is said. In fact the original post did not claim Android could not tether, just that some users had to root to do so - which is true if your carrier requires an extra payment you are unwilling to make. Millions of Android users have rooted devices in order to tether for free.
So back to my point which is still quite accurate, the tethering situation between iOS and Android is identical.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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