Slashdot Mirror
Two-Thirds of Android Antivirus Apps Are Total BS (tomsguide.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Guide: Austrian antivirus-testing lab AV-Comparatives tested 250 antivirus apps in Google Play against 2,000 malware samples. They found that only 80 of the apps could stop even a minimal amount of malware. "Less than one in 10 of the apps tested defended against all 2,000 malicious apps, while over two-thirds failed to reach a block rate of even 30 percent," the lab said in a press release. To make sure you're protecting your Android device properly, stick to apps from well-known antivirus companies. Basically, AV-Comparatives said, most Android antivirus apps are phony, and many of them seemed to have been created only to display ads or promote a developer's career. "The main purpose of these apps seems to be generating easy revenue for their developers, rather than actually protecting their users," the AV-Comparatives report said.
As long as you're using your smartphone's official App Store, there's nothing that an antivirus has to do... bad code is recalled by the store, and there's little way to get around the rules of the store.
(Cost of incident) times (frequency the incident has happened)... equates to unknown times zero... antivirus is currently worthless.
We really need to get antivirus down to a charity level of business... too many illegitimate stabs at profit going on here.
is a shithole of junkware, anything good is buried under a thousands of shitware that is not worth bothering to download, Google should be ashamed of Google Play for allowing it to become just a HUGE pile of shitware
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I am highly suspicious there is even a single AV app that is of any use, even if not actively harmful.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Android is the "total BS" - 2/3 of the antivirus apps on the platform being BULLSHIT = the platform is ~2/3 BULLSHIT. Whatever you feel about AV software, fine, but this isn't even an attempt at the problem. It's a complete charade.
And with the loose permissions on that platform, no doubt some of these anti-malware apps are closer to malware than they are AV.
So does that mean of the 2000, that 200 were OK? Care to give us a list?
The answer to your questions, including the full list, are in the first link from the summary. Please, learn to use your left mousse button before posting on slashdot.
The good ones, according to the article from the second link, are:
Twenty-three apps did detect all malware samples AV-Comparatives threw at them, including Tom's Guide's top three picks: Bitdefender Mobile Security, Norton Mobile Security and Avast Mobile Security.
Our sixth-place pick, Psafe DFNDR, was also in the 100-percent category, although AV-Comparatives noted that DFNDR used Avast's antivirus engine and had not updated itself to run properly on Android 8 Oreo and later. Lookout Mobile Security, our No. 5 pick, was a little behind the others with 99.6 percent. (Google's own Play Protect antivirus software did poorly, with a detection rate of only 69 percent.
most Android antivirus apps are phony, and many of them seemed to have been created only to display ads
And this is surprising . . . . . why?
This is what happens when you create an environment based on "give everything away for free and make money from advertising".
and that's being extremely generous
Money Honey :)
[($)]
..ought to clue anyone in that the vast majority of them are absolutely bogus. there's probably less than a couple dozen legitimate developers of consumer 'antivirus' products, total, globally, with the resources to even have half a chance at developing and maintaining an 'anti malware' app for android that actually works.
We really need to get antivirus down to a charity level of business...
It's possible to scan files on an Android device with ClamAV, a couple of different ways. As long as you get a rootable device, you can access enough files to make it worth scanning.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Viruses haven't been a problem for a long time. Not when apps keep asking for permissions for things they shouldn't need, and trick/confuse the user into volunteering their personal data.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
All the apps have very explicit permissions. Google blocks malware at the source at the Play Store when it is identified. I've never felt at all compelled to run antivirus on Android. What is the value?
The top 25 programs tested scored a hundred per cent detection rate and there were more below that in the high nineties, so the negative judgement is bit harsh. Moreover the ones that passed are all the usual suspects like Kaspersky, Avira, Avast etc which anyone with any knowledge would be more likely to buy, rather than some weird unknown brand.
The moral is to stick with the established brands that you know.
Considering that I have seen machines in my shop with every brand of antivirus on them, I tell my customers that if antivirus really worked, I wouldnâ(TM)t be in business. If itâ(TM)s a reputable antivirus and available for free, why pay for it? Whatâ(TM)s the real value of pay for antivirus? One day itâ(TM)s $9.95, the next itâ(TM)s $39.99 and the day after itâ(TM)s $79.99. Which tells me that itâ(TM)s value is whatever the market will bear.
When will Google rain down hell and fury at this nonsense? When will our own government take action against this reckless and fraudulent activity? In the age where there is no accountability in tech or simply no accountability anywhere... this is just another example of the shitshow we're all living through.
A colleague of mine has a "hobby" of fuzzing various antivirus engines with his custom tools designed mostly to test our own products. The amount of crashes, busyloops and other nasty failures he's able to trigger simply by almost blind fuzzing is amazing. He does tell of his findings to the AV engine vendors, but they tend to become mysteriously unresponsive after couple dozen crash reports in a week, or still finding crashes after several iterations of fixes...
On this basis it's not hard to think that a highly resourceful attacker might actually consider AV engine an attack surface instead of an effective defence...
Don't download warez or other questionable software onto your phone, you idiots.
OTOH, you apparently didn't read even the summary. And are too lazy to read the article.
OTOH, you are an AC.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The open market for what?
For advertising, well, yeah, it's a wild market.
For information? Well, this article is proof that an open market works. Else, you would never have known that these apps do nothing but display ads.
And of course we all know advertising is purely for our benefit and edification, right?
Just don't try to play dumb with us. You're actually dumber than you know in that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's right there in TFS -- only 1 in 10 sussed out all the malware.