App Anomaly Detection is an innovative new real-time protection feature that allows you to defend Android users from all those applications that “shed their skin” and become malicious over time. The tool, integrated in Bitdefender Mobile Security, analyzes the behavior of all Android applications installed and running on the mobile device.
Model Malware as a Service (MaaS) It’s an increasingly popular business model among cybercriminals: to maximize their business, attackers provide customers with an online infrastructure for distributing and executing malware. A group of cybercriminals create and manage malware that some customers then use to conduct targeted cyberattacks. The MaaS model is often offered through illicit websites: here customers purchase services on a monthly or yearly basis; sometimes it is even possible to pay only for the results obtained by theattackfor example based on the volume of stolen data on victims’ devices.
This is a worrying approach because it allows attackers to create e distribute malware on a large scale, without even having the technical knowledge to do it yourself.
Attacking i android devices has become a priority for cybercriminals: the smartphones we use every day contain all kinds of personal data and confidential information that attackers can exploit directly or “launder” to conduct further attacks.
We recently presented a malware like Xenomorph that integrates multiple tactics and leverages a wide range of tools to take root on the Android devices of the unfortunate and steal money from current accounts online.
Bitdefender App Anomaly Detection is a new technology integrated into Bitdefender Malware Scanner that provides an extra layer of protection by continuously monitoring and detecting any malicious behavior on the Android terminal. In case any app Android installed should show a suspicious behaviorthe threat is blocked and the user is immediately notified.
Designed to help safeguard the datafinancial assets and users’ identities from fake or malicious Android applications, App Anomaly Detection is able to defend users against known and unknown attacks (zero-day).
How Bitdefender App Anomaly Detection works and why it’s useful
When other solutions antimalware per Androidcurrently available on the market, use signature-based detection, limit themselves to checking the requested permissions or perform a mild behavioral analysis, the new solution proposed by Bitdefender uses a decidedly smarter and more modern approach.
App Anomaly Detection it uses a combination of templates machine learningreal-time behavior scanning, systems reputation and other ancillary data to continuously monitor the apps running on your Android mobile device.
The technologies of detection based on behavior have been available since time immemorial on desktop platforms: App Anomaly Detection brings an absolute novelty within the Android ecosystem.
Cybercriminals, taking advantage of the MaaS model described in the introduction, increasingly develop and distribute Android apps that initially pass all checks (including Google Protect) and virus scans and then activate malicious behavior only when certain conditions are met or when a few days or weeks pass from the time of installation.
The news is that App Anomaly Detection is able to immediately detect the moment when an application turns from benign to malicious: Bitdefender’s solution thus protects even those users who have unknowingly installed a dangerous application that remains inactive for a certain period of time or an apparently reliable application that suddenly becomes harmful.
Now integrated into Bitdefender Mobile Security, an app downloadable from Google Play Storethe function App Anomaly Detection is enabled by default in the section Scan of the Bitdefender software. Finally, it is worth noting that the security tool just presented by Bitdefender and dedicated to all owners of Android devices has minimal impact on battery life.