Researchers at North Carolina State University in the US have tried and tested the new Google application verification service and found that it leaves a lot to be desired. Google’s Application Verification is a new service included in the latest Android 4.2 Jelly Bean mobile operating system. It checks apps for malware before app installation to help safeguard your smartphone and its valuable data.
Interested, perhaps even excited, by the new security feature, researchers at NC State decided to have a look and check the performance of the new service under test. Excitement and optimism were short lived however. The team headed by Prof. Xuxian Jiang found that out of 1,260 infected app and malware samples, from the Android Malware Genome Project, the built-in application verification scanner detected a paltry 193 threats. Overall it offered a “low detection rate of 15.32 percent” concluded the study. So the answer to the question as to whether Android 4.2 users need third-party security apps remains a resounding yes.
Detection chart
You can see in the above detection chart how poorly Google’s application verification service performed. Many Android AV products get very close to 100 per cent detection scores when checking samples from the Android Malware Genome Project.
On Google’s page detailing the new Jelly Bean 4.2 OS Application Verification is listed right at the top of the table of improvements offered in the upgraded operating system. Google says that “Users can choose to enable “Verify Apps" and have applications screened by an application verifier, prior to installation. App verification can alert the user if they try to install an app that might be harmful; if an application is especially bad, it can block installation.” As we can see from the research findings the system isn’t pulling its weight right now but Jiang notes that VirusTotal, acquired by Google in September, hasn’t yet been integrated into the scanner. The VirusTotal scanner “performs much better than this standalone service” reports the study. Let us hope that Google does integrate the VirusTotal detection engine soon or this headlining security feature of Android 4.2 remains nothing more than a paper tiger.
