Microsoft is monitoring malicious Android apps to stop them from being ported to Windows

Microsoft made a lot of noise in the developer community this week with its announcement that you can now port Android and iOS apps to Windows with new tools. While these tools, for ethical developers, will save time and allow them to leverage assets on other platforms, it does also raise security concerns too.

It's no secret that malicious apps have found their way into the Google Play store and Microsoft wants to make sure those apps are not brought over to the Windows ecosystem. The company said that they have a team of researchers who monitor these apps and based on telemetry data from Windows users and report submissions, they will proactively go after these apps to make sure that they either do not get into the store, or if they slip through the security controls, are quickly removed.

You can hear Microsoft talk about these features at the 23:00 mark in the video above and this session is titled “PROJECT ASTORIA“: Build Great Windows Apps with Your Android Code".

It shouldn't come as a big surprise that Microsoft is acutely aware of the threats inside the Android world and that they want to prevent Astoria from being used to bring these apps over to the Windows camp. Still, reassurance that Microsoft is proactively looking out for this specific threat-case well ahead of wide adoption of Astoria should give comfort to Windows users.

Thanks for the tip Justin!