{"id":195216,"date":"2017-01-19T16:24:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T14:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=195216"},"modified":"2017-01-19T16:27:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T14:27:13","slug":"how-google-finds-android-malware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/195216-how-google-finds-android-malware.html","title":{"rendered":"How Google finds Android malware"},"content":{"rendered":"

A post<\/strong><\/a> on the Android Developers Blog has explained how the company detects and deals with malware.<\/p>\n

“One security solution included on all devices with Google Play is Verify apps. Verify apps checks if there are Potentially Harmful Apps on your device,” stated the post.<\/p>\n

If harmful apps are found, they are uninstalled.<\/p>\n

If a device stops “checking up with Verify apps”, it is considered dead or insecure (DOI).<\/p>\n

“An app with a high enough percentage of DOI devices downloading it, is considered a DOI app.”<\/p>\n

This metric is used to help determine if an app is potentially harmful to users, said Google.<\/p>\n

The Android team uses a “dead or insecure scorer”, which is based on an app’s device retention rate, as part of its calculations.<\/p>\n

An app’s retention rate is the percentage of all retained devices that downloaded the app in one day<\/p>\n

“Because retention is a strong indicator of device health, we work to maximize the ecosystem’s retention rate.”<\/p>\n

To calculate the number of standard deviations from the average is called a Z-score. The equation for the Z-score is below.<\/p>\n