What is PUP.HighConfidence? (Solution)

Published on: November 12, 2018

If you’ve ever used VirusTotal to scan your Android apps, at some point you would’ve seen an irritating result with 'Babable' Antivirus marking your App as unsafe with PUP.HighConfidence.

But what is PUP.HighConfidence?
Well, PUP stands for 'Potentially Unwanted Program' & the HighConfidence just means that the chances are high that the app is a PUP!

Here is what I did & listing below my findings on PUP.HighConfidence –

I made a simple App which had an EditText, Button & a TextView.
The App would show the typed text in TextView on a Button’s click.
I uploaded this App on VirusTotal & here’s what the result looked like below –

Googling on the web didn't give me any satisfactory reasons as to why was this happening!

After many tries, I then thought of uploading a Non-Debuggable version of the App as previously, I uploaded a version signed with the debug keystore. But the error still remained 🙁!
Next, I then signed the App with a production key & uploaded the same on VirusTotal & below is what I found –

The 'Babable' Antivirus doesn't mark the App unsafe if the App is a RELEASE version & SIGNED with your PRODUCTION KEY!

Even if the app is Non-Debuggable but signed with the Default Android Debug keystore, it is marked as a PUP.HighConfidence!