---
title: 'What is PUP.HighConfidence? (Solution)'
excerpt: "Encountered PUP.HighConfidence on VirusTotal? Here's what I discovered."
summary: "VirusTotal's PUP.HighConfidence flag from Babable hits Android apps signed with the debug keystore; a release build signed with your production key clears it."
date: 2018-11-12
categories: android, security
featureImage: '/images/what-is-pup-highconfidence-solution.webp'

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---

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 –

  <BlogPostImage src="/images/pup-babable.webp" alt="VirusTotal detection one engine found" />

---

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 –

  <BlogPostImage src="/images/pup-babable-fix.webp" alt="VirusTotal scan all clean verified" />

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`!