Current status of antivirus software on Android platform: 2/3 of them are not really effective

According to a report by AV-Comparatives, a world-renowned antivirus evaluation agency, only 80 (less than 1/3) of the 250 antivirus applications sampled from the Google Android platform in 2018 passed the website's basic standard test. Researchers said that some incomplete antivirus applications would even mark themselves.

The reason is simple. The evaluation agency explained that these substandard antivirus applications did not actually scan the application code. This involves many well-known security brands such as Kaspersky, McAfee and Symantec.

According to the analysis of the evaluation agency, this situation also illustrates the challenges faced by Google and other app stores in screening applications: they can verify that the applications will not cause harm to users or violate the law, but they cannot enforce the basic standards required to ensure the safety of mobile phones.

In order to eliminate vulnerabilities in the Google Play Store, Google launched a new project as early as October 2017, and began to offer rewards to security experts who discovered vulnerabilities in Android applications: it promised that for each vulnerability discovered, the security expert would receive a reward of at least US$1,000.

Google hopes the move will find malware and other problems that automated checks fail to catch. Vineet Buch, director of product management for Google Play apps and games, said in an interview that humans are better than software scanners at finding "really creative attacks."