A team of researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) claims to have developed a tool to analyse numbers of apps to trace the origin and family of malware.
Guillermo Suarez de Tangil, a researcher at the computer science department at the university, said malware can be in smartphones and even in washing machines.
“The amount of malware is constantly increasing and it is becoming more intelligent for that reason,” he said. “Security analysts and market administrators are overwhelmed and cannot afford exhaustive checking for each app.”
The tool is called Dendroid and will track down the family and nature of the malware. “Developers generally reuse components of other malwares, and that precisely is what allows us to construct this genetic map,” he said.
He said antivirus software used in smartphones use detection engines based on signatures and its effectiveness is questionable, largely because smartphone resources are limited compared to a PC.
