Google putting an anti virus scanner for Android in play

Google is eager to improve security on its Android app marketplace, and the company is now allegedly  working on a new technology framework designed to scan apps on Android-based devices and check if they include malware, adware, spyware or other kind of malicious code.

The “Google Android antivirus” news surfaced from the teardown of the new Google Play Store app (version 3.9.16): the .apk package contains strings referring to the couple of components that should form the antimalware framework, ie an “app check” to test all the apps already installed on the device and the an “app blocker” to actively control downloads in search for malicious and/or harmful code.

Speculations suggest that the client-side antivirus API could work in tandem with Bouncer, the server-side, automated monitoring service created by Google to block spreading of malicious apps within the Play marketplace. It this regard, Google will surely benefit from the recent acquisition of on-line antimalware service VirusTotal.

If the Play antivirus speculations proved to be true, Google would have a perfect timing in working on the new Android API: the security situation on the mobile OS marketplace is deteriorating quickly, so much that even the FBI-backed Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recently issued an Intelligence Note warning users against the latest waves of “malware attacking” Android devices including the information-stealing Loozfon and the uber-spyware and spying agent FinFisher.

Source: ZDNet