Announcing the Android Malware Genome Project

Mobile security researchers are announcing a global effort to share data on malware targeting the Android platform, in an effort to improve our ability to defend against such attacks.

The Android Malware Genome Project is the brainchild of Xuxian Jiang, a researcher at NC State who has already collected over 1,200 pieces of Android malware. The project is designed to share all of the code related to the malware, with the goal of facilitating security research. Jiang and his team have been the first to identify dozens of Android malware programs, including DroidKungFu and GingerMaster.

Jiang announced the project May 22 at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in San Francisco.

The project is important, Jiang says, because “our defense capability is largely constrained by the limited understanding of these emerging mobile malware and the lack of timely access to related samples. Our research community needs to do a better job of sharing data if we want to develop timely, next-generation mobile security solutions.”