Investigating the effectiveness of Mobile Antivirus Application on Android and Windows Mobile Phone Essay

Chapter 1 Anti-virus Applications on prompt Devices planetary band anti-virus softw ar program refers to certification softwargon programs which sustain been profession tout ensemble(prenominal)(a)y developed to nourish guile expenditurers from vir substance abuses, worms, Trojans and other malicious programs and removing them where mathematical. Anti-virus parcel programs obligate lately gained popularity due the change magnitude incidences of malicious holy terrors of attack on the web. in that respect are several new viruses that are breaked on a day to day posterior on the cyberspace. While some of these viruses whitethorn be harmless, others are annoying and quite destructive. Certain viruses replicate themselves, alone others whitethorn cause serious problems to the extent of erasing all data on a thingamajig drive. The use of anti-virus for device protection measure peck be applied to multiple operating clays including wide awake Windows and Android wide awake telecommunicates (iSoftwareReviews 2010).Antivirus software works in various technical ways to give security measures to and remove viruses from wandering devices. This normally occur through two security s faecesning swear outs namely On-Access Scanning and On-Demand Scanning. The On-Access scanning works in real-time to ensure a unstable device is protected at all times by monitoring for viruses to each accessing in the quick device, for good example while opening a file or opening an industriousness. disrespect of the fact that this software slows down the speed of a device, its role in antivirus certificate is so critical and should thus be enabled at all times. On-Demand Scanning supports antivirus shelter only when activated to scan any feature area, folder, file, or drive. The program then provides a scan report active how many viruses that afford been found in the scanned item. In the event that a virus is detected, the program will nonify the e xploiter and recommend an performance which includes either to deleting or quarantine the virus (iSoftwareReviews 2010).The rapidly increasing advancements of mobile phone engineering to include a number of useful features have make humanoid and windows mobile phones very popular pocket own(prenominal) computers. This increased popularity has not however come with its own setbacks. Just the like the ordinary personal computers, android and windows mobile phones have also been radicaled to increased viruses attack. Virus attack has therefore become the latest and single biggest threat to the mobile phone industry. Subsequently, numerous companies dealing in software have come up with anti-virus for use in the android and windows mobile phones. These are mainly anti-virus software packages developed to provide anti-virus protection to mobile phones (iSoftwareReviews 2010). in that location are a number of anti-virus software programs for mobile phones that are gettable to the us ers. The main mobile phone anti-virus software includes AhnLab Mobile security measure, Avast PDA Edition, Avira Antivir Mobile, BitDefender Mobile Security, BullGuard Mobile Antivirus, Dr.Web Mobile Security Suite, F-Secure Mobile Security, Kaspersky Mobile Security, and Norton Smartphone Security. AhnLab Mobile Security software provides a solution for viruses and worms protection and removal. It runs under windows mobile and android mobile phones. Avast PDA Edition is an antivirus protection for PalmOS and Windows CE, Android phones, and Pocket PC establish devices (iSoftwareReviews 2010).Avira AntiVir Mobile provides professional virus and malware protection for pocket PCs, Windows mobile and Android mobile phones. BitDefender Mobile Security provides solution for virus protection and removal for PDAs and Smartphone that run on Windows mobile or Android mobile phones. BullGuard Mobile Antivirus provides solutions for protecting Pocket PCs and Windows mobile against viruses and other malicious programs. Dr.Web Mobile Security Suite is designed to provide anti-virus security solutions for pocket PCs that runs on Windows Mobile operating system. F-Secure Mobile Security is a complete mobile security software package that includes anti-virus, anti-spyware, a firewall and a remote manoeuvre anti-theft feature for protection. Kaspersky Mobile Security also provides a complete protection package including Anti-theft protection, virus protection, firewall and anti-spam for SMS, EMS, and MMS. Norton Smartphone Security offers anti-virus, anti-spam, and firewall for Windows mobile and Android mobile protection (iSoftwareReviews 2010).Protecting an android and window mobile phone from attack requires a complete understanding of all use communication. This is important because software can only protect a device if and only if it is able to enter the same information as the mobile phone device, subsequently exertion layer threats. It may not be possible within the technological framework for antivirus software to understand application communications or psychoanalyze application behaviour through the deep inspection of intrusion stripe packets, whether on individual basis or when reassembled into their original sequence. Similarly, network-level antivirus may detect a small number of known, easily identifiable security threats by simply examining pre-programmed patterns (Citrix Systems 2006).Installation of antivirus is the best known way of protecting android and windows mobile phones. The best types of antivirus are the application firewalls since they operate at the application layer instead of the network level. The application firewalls are able to go through correct application behaviour while preventing any malicious activity. This is because the firewalls are able to inspect the actual internet communication and understand the context of all client requests and application responses through which they are sent to the internet. A complete mobile phone security application needs to offer full protection of all the elements of an application as well as users of the application. In most cases however, security applications for mobile phones are only confine to the application programme and application data (Citrix Systems 2006).Thesis Statement disdain web devices continuing to face significant security threats, mobile phones go completely unprotected while web browsing, downloading applications, checking e-mail, conducting online banking and connecting to social networking sites like chitter and Facebook. While mobile attacks are increasing rapidly and hackers are financially motivated to steal data, identities, and intercept corporate communications, it has become critical to protect mobile devices such as android phone and Windows phones.Background of the fillSmartphone security is the work at of preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your system. Prevention measures befriend you to stop unauthor ized users (also known as intruders) from accessing any part of your mobile phone system. Detection helps you to determine whether or not someone attempt to break into your system, if they were successful, and what they may have done. We use android and windows mobile for everything from banking and spend to shopping and communicating with others through email or chat programs. Although you may not regard your communications top secret, you probably do not want strangers reading your email, using your phone to attack other systems, send forged email from your phone, or examining personal information stored on your phone (such as financial statements).There are a variety of antivirus software packages that operate in many different ways, depending on how the vendor chose to give their software. What they have in common, though, is that they all seek for patterns in the files or retrospect of your Smartphone that indicate the possible presence of a known virus. Antivirus package s know what to look for through the use of virus profiles (sometimes called mites) provided by the vendor. New viruses are observe daily. The effectiveness of antivirus software is dependent on having the latest virus profiles installed on your Smartphone so that it can look for recently discovered viruses. It is important to conserve these profiles up to date.Chapter 2 Android Phone EmulatorsAn android mobile phone is a phone fitted with a set of software consisting of operating systems, middleware and other major applications. The main features of android include application framework for facilitating apply and replacement of components, Dalvik virtual machine which is optimised for mobile devices, optimised graphics, an integrated browser, media tools for common audio, picture and still image formats, SQLite for structured data storage, and GSM Telephony. Other features include Bluetooth, Camera, and moneyed development consisting of a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling. Android technology is dependent on Linux version 2.6 to power the main system go including security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver models (Android Developers 2010).Android technology is made up of a multi-process system in which each application runs in its own process. A standard Linux facility is responsible for coordinating security between different applications such as user and group identifications assign to the applications in Android mobile phone. The crux of the security applications is on the basis of the concept that no application, by default, has access to perform any outgrowth with a potential of adversely impacting on other applications, the operating system, or the user. The applications that the Linux facility must grant permission include reading or written material the users private data, reading or writing another applications file, performing network access, and keeping the device awake. Th e permission that an application requires is statistically declared in that application so that Linux facility can master the upfront during installation and not subject to change thereafter (Android Developers 2010).The antivirus software for mobile forms utilises various virus spying methods. The two main virus detection methods include signature based detection and behaviour based detection. Signature base Detection makes use of virus signatures dictionary to compare the files when checking for viruses. A signature dictionary is a database containing very many virus signatures which the software manufacturer has so cold found. The user is expected to continually update the virus signature directory as when new viruses, worms, Trojans, and other malicious programs appear. Failure to update the dictionary may lead to failure of the software to detect emerging viruses. The behaviour Based Detection is designed to monitor and control any activities in the device system for mirthf ul program behaviour. In the event that a suspicious behaviour is detected, the software probes further into that suspicious behaviour by applying the signature based detection to countercheck whether the activity is malicious or not. In the event that the suspicious program is malicious, an alert will be generated to counsel the user.Android emulator is a virtual mobile device which runs on a phone system and allows the user to prototype, develop, and test android applications for possible malicious programs without necessarily using a physical device. This device mimics all the hardware and software features of a phone save for the fact that it cannot run into or make a call. As soon as a particular application starts to run on the emulator, it may make use of the services of the android platform to invoke other applications, access the network, and terminate the user. The emulators also contain various debug capabilities like console from which the user can log kernel output, simulate application interrupts, and simulate response time effects and dropouts on the data channel (Android developers 2010).As stated earlier, android utilises a multi-process system in which each and every application runs on its own process. Since majority of the security between applications is granted at the process level, android emulators provide more detailed security features through a permission mechanism that enforces restriction on the particular proposition operations that any particular process can perform and permission for granting ad-hoc access to specific pieces of data. While the emulators ensures that no application acts in a manner that can adversely affect another application, it is still possible for an application to intrench into the actions of another application as long as permission is forehanded obtained in order to perform the foreign function not provided by the basic nucleus (Vennon 2010).The android emulators can also disallow these irrelevant permissions on the basis of the certificates that were used to sign the application or by simply prompting the user. The permission that an application will require to function outside its nucleus is statistically declared by the emulators within the application and will be relayed to the Smartphone user, and the permission will not change. The android emulators consider malware to be malicious software designed to infiltrate a Smartphone system without the users informed consent (Vennon 2010).