Google: Play Protect Cut Harmful Android App Installs by 20% in 2018 (venturebeat.com) 26
Speaking of the state of Android apps' security, Google today published its annual Android Security & Privacy Year in Review, a comprehensive report that details the company's ongoing efforts to keep over two billion devices running Android mobile operating system secure. From a report: Google says that Google Play Protect, Android's AI-driven built-in defense mechanism, substantially cut down on the number of Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs) in Google Play. Last year, only 0.08 percent of devices that used Google Play exclusively for app downloads were affected by PHAs, and even devices that installed apps from outside of Play -- 0.68 percent of which were affected by one or more PHAs, down from 0.80 percent in 2017 -- saw a 15 percent reduction in malware. In fact, Play Protect prevented 1.6 billion PHA installation attempts from outside of Google Play in 2018, Google says [PDF]. Installation attempts outside of Google Play fell by 20 percent from the previous year, and 73 percent of PHA installations were successfully stopped compared to 71 percent in 2017 and 59 percent in 2016. In all, 0.45 percent of Android devices running Play Protect installed PHAs in 2018 compared with 0.56 percent of devices in 2017, equating to a 20 percent year-over-year improvement.
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Headline: Noun verb verb verb adj noun noun noun. Dude... that's not how sentences work.
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo
We caught 20% more bad malware! (Score:2)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Re: How many did f-droid protect against? (Score:1)
It's only a matter if time until "play protect" flags F-Droid as a harmful app. They're already flagging Aptoide.
Re: How many did f-droid protect against? (Score:1)
They can flag it all they want. I deleted my google account on my phone. So I am wandering around blind and helpless. No, actually my phone still works great and I get updates from aptoide.
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Except for... well, y'know those mentioned 5 posts back https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
The Google Play Protect team knows that at any given time, their PHA stats are wrong -- are too low -- because they can only count PHA installs that they know about. In fact, the known PHA install rate on any given day, say, March 29th, is zero, because Play doesn't allow installation of known PHAs, but it will rise over time as PHAs are discovered.
This is part of the reason that the stats for a given year are only released at the end of the first quarter of the next year, to give time for PHA discovery
Android Play is a Minefield (Score:2)
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If Google's solution still leaves 80% of the malware out there, it's not really successful in any practical way
You should re-read the summary. The PHA install rate was 0.08%, not 80%. The "20% reduction" is because the last year's PHA install rate was 0.1%.
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The article is about Google reducing the number of malware installs by 20%. That's not a big number, and that's APK level bragging. It means Google's solution doesn't work.
It's a huge number, if sustained year over year in the face of innovative malware authors. This is an arms race, and Google is staying ahead, and widening the lead.
Better solution is NOT purely technical (Score:2)
Why are there so many dangerous apps?
Look at the motivations of the people creating the malware. That is how you find the better solutions.
On that basis, I'll repeat my old and oft-ignored suggestion for a different solution approach: SHOW THE MONEY!
My suggested implementation would be a "financial model" tab or section as part of the app's description. It would basically have two parts, (1) one part from the developer (or distributor) and (2) one part from the google.
(1) The developer would usually be able
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Because the Google Play Store, unlike the Apple App Store, has generally been a free for all, letting developers post anything and everything without going through a review process. This was done as a counterpoint to the Apple App Store which requires all apps to undergo review.
So as developers rebelled against Apple for having their apps reviewed, they gladly created Android only apps, improving the ecosystem.
Of course, if you have a free for all, it's obvious that bad
Re: Better solution is NOT purely technical (Score:1)
Apple blocks whole categories of apps for reasons that have nothing to do with malware or privacy.
Re: crap (Score:1)
You can't get an app to protect you from Apple's walled garden.
20 100 (Score:2)
The store is no better than downloading from the internet.