Tencent to Bring Malware-free Certification to Android Apps in China

Malware-ridden Android apps have been a concern for some time now – and the most dangerous place for these is on China’s third-party app stores. That’s why the App Store Connect (ASC) publishers – which distributes some international apps in China – has teamed up with Tencent’s new Mobile Security Lab to bring peace-of-mind to Chinese app downloaders.

Tencent’s new security labs are ostensibly for the development of their own suite of mobile anti-virus apps, but for the first time Tencent is opening up the labs to a partner. The deal allows ASC to get tests run and safety-certification slapped onto the apps that it’ll distribute in China – to reassure users of random Chinese app stores that the apps are both genuine and malware-free. It’ll be a seal of approval from a (um, sort of) trusted source.

Presumably, Tencent will also get the exposure of having its name tied to this new security assurance, which will gradually roll out across ASC-distributed apps in various app stores.

It was partly security concerns that led Rovio Mobile, makers of the hit Angry Birds trio of games, to strike a deal with DownJoy.com back in May, to distribute proper versions of the free-with-ads versions of the games.

Trojan Games

Mobile is a new privacy and security battleground, and one where Android has taken quite a kicking in the past year. Last December the Geinimi Trojan horse was found to be grafted onto pirated versions of popular international games in China, originating from forums, blogs, and obscure app stores.

And this year there have been numerous Android scares – some again in China, but also two notable instances in Google’s own Android Market. Also in May this year the DroidKungFu virus was found in re-distributed apps in China, with the potential to take over a users’ phone via some security backdoors in Android 2.2.

Indeed, with ASC’s new deal to get their distributed apps tested by Tencent’s lab, it could be said that it’s now a safer solution than Google’s own (lack of) approval process.