Though we see it advertised as an antivirus app, it doesn’t seem to do too much!

Lately there has been a lot of investigation done with Google Play and the growing number of untrustworthy programs that are hidden in various apps.  For the most part they aren’t too malicious but they certainly are unsuitable for most business networks.  Many of these hidden apps fall into a category called Potentially Unwanted Applications.

The apps being studied usually have features that users are wanting, like editing tools, or a device power optimizer but unfortunately they are also bundled with things that can leach off a phone or tablet’s processing power or can also push unwanted ads onto the users screen.  The app called Super Antivirus 2018 is an example for sure!

This Super Antivirus 2018 is certainly not an antivirus.  After the app was uploaded to Google Play in early October of last year, it has been downloaded by users up to 50,000 times.  With claims to detect 100% of viruses and malware through personalized scanning, it seems as though it is less then accurate.

After analyzing the code, it seems that this app basically provides a smokescreen to throw security researchers off track.  It gives the appearance of doing legitimate security work and even scans and detects nearly 500 apps, but again…just a smokescreen as it provides no effective protection for the end user.

Super Antivirus 2018, does a fake virus scan and frequently displays a pop-up for another app called “Security Elite – Clean Virus, Antivirus, Booster.”  More pop-up adverts are what you can expect with this new app.  These deceptive promotions and pop-ups of course violate the Google Play Developer App Promotion Policy, specifically:

We don’t allow apps that directly or indirectly engage in or benefit from promotion practices that are deceptive or harmful to users or the developer ecosystem.

Issues connected to Super Antivirus 2018 include:

• Does not provide a proper malware removal feature
• It can mislead users into believing there is a virus on their Android device
• It can entice users to download another malware removal tool

 

Read more on the study done by SophosLabs and the paper written by Android specialist Rowland Yu.

Click here

 

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Topic:  Super Antivirus 2018