Research: virus scanners on Android are easy to work around

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Researchers from two American universities have antivirus software for Android under the microscope and have discovered that the security a lot to be desired. In particular, Lookout, one of the most popular virus scanners, is easy to the garden.

The researchers from Northwestern University and North Carolina State University names a total of ten virus scanners under the microscope, including popular packages such as AVG, Lookout and Dr. Web. That they write in their research paper, published in march has already been issued, but only now in the public domain.

The researchers developed a tool that the anti-virus scanners to the garden and tried to guide: DroidChameleon. All antivirus software is proved to be vulnerable to relatively simple techniques for detection, to avoid, such as the re-packaging of software, so the signature changes. Also how to rename files, renaming the package, or the encrypting of information was often enough to allow the virus scanners to the garden.

The software is by far the worst performance, was Lookout. That package, which, according to Google by 10 to 50 million people is downloaded, was made on each tested way to the garden. Also the less popular Zoner was in many respects vulnerable. AVG, the most popular scanner, performed better, but was still easy to work around. Oddly enough it turned out AVG is not vulnerable to advanced omzeilmethoden, but was the renaming of a package sufficient to make the virus completely harmless.