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CAMP: a new malware detection system coming to Chrome

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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Google has developed a new system for detecting malware, for inclusion in Chrome and other browsers called CAMP (Content-Agnostic Malware Protection). It has been tested with 200 million Chrome users on Windows, and proved more effective than traditional methods of malware detection.

CAMP is a malware detection system developed by Google researchers. It has been shown to be 99% successful at detecting malicious downloads, using a combined server and client system.

A research paper published in February describes the system, which can check the validity of a download locally (in Chrome) 70% of the time, while referring to cloud the rest of the time. The researchers claim it is 99% accurate in preventing malicious downloads, which means it out performs all current anti-virus software.

CAMP works by comparing an executable file with a known whitelist of safe files, and a known blacklist of malware. Anything which falls into these categories can be decided as safe or not on your browser, while an unknown file has to be checked by Google’s servers. If a file is deemed malicious, a message appears in your browser that offers to delete the file.

CAMP’s reputation system for detecting malware uses file metadata to make a decision. These factors are things like where it came from and how it was reached by the user. It does not need to check the content of the executable itself.

It doesn’t protect you like a firewall, or from sites that try to exploit bugs to attack your computer though your browser, but it is much more effective at detecting downloaded malware. It won’t be able to protect you from malware downloaded outside your browser (file sharing apps, etc).

What makes CAMP interesting is its attempt to bridge the gap between blacklisting and whitelisting as means to filter bad files. While it only works with downloaded executable files at the moment, the research team have proved that their concept is much more effective than the methods used by traditional Anti-virus suites.

CAMP will make downloading from your browser considerably safer.

[source: https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~moheeb/aburajab-ndss-13.pdf]

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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