antivirus

ned rierson

do you need antivirus software on smartphones/ androids ?

Davy

ned rierson wrote: »

do you need antivirus software on smartphones/ androids ?

No, its like anything once your carefull

Davy

LIGHTNING wrote: »

I would like to disagree, the Malware industry has the biggest growth rate of practically any industry. There has already been a large increase in the amount of malware being created for smart phones. I personally have removed some malware from android phones not too recently.

While its obviously a bigger risk now with the amount of more smart phones increasing ten fold, its still not a need to have for everyone. Its like anything, it depends on your usage style. Some people must have phone insurance, others go for years and would never had need to make a claim.

drunkmonkey

I can see one good android/windows7 virus bricking a lot of phones. It's only a matter of time. There's a whole new industry waiting to develop on the back of it.

KrisW

Malware seems to be a bigger problem on Android than the other platforms, and unlike iOS or Nokia, you can get stung very easily even if you only use the "official" distribution channel:

ZDNet on "Android's malware mess"

On a technical level, Android gets a lot of security from being based on Linux, but that's pretty much irrelevant for malware these days. Malware doesn't try to defeat system security measures - it asks the user to bypass them for it. And when every single piddling app on Android seems to ask for every possible permission by default, it's easy to get "authorisation fatigue" - eventually users just click "allow all" on every installation, for a quiet life.

The only significant malware on iOS is iTunes..

Daffodil.d

I can't 100% back this up but according to a friend of mine "Kaspersky" do a phone, antivirus. This came up in conversation in the pub so details are blurry. Maybe look it up and see.
:rolleyes:

amdaley28

Daffodil.d wrote: »

I can't 100% back this up but according to a friend of mine "Kaspersky" do a phone, antivirus. This came up in conversation in the pub so details are blurry. Maybe look it up and see.
:rolleyes:

AVG does one as well.

srsly78

It's pointless. If an app gets pulled from the market it also gets remote wiped from phones, so why bother having AV?

A much better suggestion would be to run one of the firewall apps.

About the iphone and malware: it has MASSIVE vulnerabilities. The "1 click root" uses such a vulnerability, malware could easily do the same. A simple website can jailbreak the iphone, so what do you think malware can do?

KrisW

Having the app pulled is no use once your credit card details have already been stolen.

srsly78

The credit card is not stored on the phone. Apps cannot access your creditcard. Rather they could access your google account, and that is associated with your google account, but they can't actually get the number. They COULD use it to buy more apps tho, but google would likely reverse the charges.

Feel free to be paranoid tho. With NFC this could become more of an issue, but NFC will likely require some extra steps. I read that one of the things they are requiring is the device requiring manual input of password everytime you clock up a tenner of NFC payments. This is aimed at microtransactions most like. Larger transactions would require password everytime.

Also, in your situation above antivirus will be useless. If google doesn't know about the malware, neither would the antivirus company. Heuristics aren't much good here, because there is little difference between malware and normal apps from a software point of view.

KrisW

The credit card is not stored on the phone. Apps cannot access your creditcard.

Yes, but they don't need to. A keylogger can wait until you buy something online using the web-browser. This is how it works on PCs. Okay, that keylogger-tainted app will eventually be pulled and remotely wiped, but it has done its job by then. The first you know of it is when your credit card shows up some oddball transaction.

If google doesn't know about the malware, neither would the antivirus company.

An AV company has a commercial incentive to find out; Google don't. PC AV companies trawl the internet looking for malware, so that they can refine their scanners.

A lot of this can be easily screened for, but Google don't bother - they prefer to wave everything through, and wait for users to be stung.

there is little difference between malware and normal apps from a software point of view

Maybe in Marketplace... Seriously, though, keyloggers in particular have a very distinct signature. Tapping the raw input stream is not a typical application task. Yes, it would be hard to scan for a keylogger within a custom input method, but you'd expect these to be tested before being offered for download?