Play Protect will recommend scans for apps that have never been scanned before during installation. — Google
Google Play Protect will now scan the code of apps being installed on Android devices in order to detect potentially malicious or harmful apps in real-time.
Play Protect is Google’s malware protection tool for Android devices.
On its security blog, Google says that Play Protect had previously done real-time checks to catch known malicious apps and apps similar to them, along with other suspicious apps flagged by on-device machine learning.
When Play Protect makes a detection during the app installation process, it would then alert users of the potential malware.
The addition of real-time app code scanning is intended to improve device security by detecting emerging threats that have not been encountered prior.
"Scanning will extract important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend infrastructure for a code-level evaluation.
"Once the real-time analysis is complete, users will get a result letting them know if the app looks safe to install or if the scan determined the app is potentially harmful.
"This enhancement will help better protect users against malicious polymorphic apps that leverage various methods, such as AI, to be altered to avoid detection," writes the company.
Only apps that have never been scanned by Google before will be recommended for scan by Play Protect during installation.
Play Protect will then submit the app for review, which is then used to compare app behaviour and train the company's machine learning algorithm to enhance security protections.
The improved Google Play Protect is now being rolled out to India, and will be pushed to all other regions in the coming months.
