Permissions Based Malware Detection System for Android A Review and Surveys

Abstract

Number of smart phones users is increasing rapidly andAndroid is currently the most popular Smartphone operating system.However, users feel their private information at threat, facing arapidly increasing number of malwares for Android whichsignificantly increasing that of other platforms. There are largenumber of apps available for the ease and use of the smartphoneusers. When a user installs any application from the google playstore he/she is asked to grant some permissions to function theparticular application properly. User either has to accept all thosepermissions in order to install the application on his/her device orhe/she has to deny all those permission and terminate theinstallation of the application. A normal smartphone useris notaware of most of the permissions asked during installation so he/shetends to accept those all permissions in order to use the application.This introduces a potential threat to the users device. With thissmartphones usage, mobile malware attacksare also growing.Theapplication that we are developing will help user to identify themalicious applications that are installed on the device. And if a userfinds any malicious activity being performed by any application thenhe/she can change the necessary permissions to avoid the maliciousactivity being done by the application. All this will be done post theinstallation of any application. So user will first have to accept allthose permissions and get the app installed on his/her device fromthe google paly store. And then user can modify (allow/deny) thepermissions the application is using. Our proposed application willhave a scanning activity which will tell the user which applicationsare malicious and may harm the device. The application will usemachine learning approach to some extent for scanning theapplications to determine the application is malicious or not.