Strange bug report – error caused by ProwlerAgent411

Question

I use bugsensec.om to receive crash reports from my android app. Today I received a raport including:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to instantiate activity
ComponentInfo{{myPackage}/{myPackage}.StationListActivity}:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: {myPackage}.StationListActivity in loader
dalvik.system.PathClassLoader[/system/app/ProwlerAgent411.apk:
/data/app/{myPackageApp}.apk]

It's just I am curious what this actually means. It was fired by a rooted device in US (my app is targeted to only local customers in Europe). After some googling for this ProwlerAgent I found Norton Mobile reference.

Maybe I have just answered my own question.. Is it rather personal AV scanner on someones phone or maybe a sandbox for checking apps at Norton labs (I don't think I would get this report if it was the case). Should I do something about it in terms of better app development?

Answer 1

I have found a similar problem. But i noticed 1 thing. I had the activity inside my manifest. It was a legacy activity that I no longer used and it was removed in favor of a fragment, but I never removed it from the Manifest file. That caused that problem as far as it happened in my app.

So basically in my Manifest I had .ActivtyAboutUs but nowhere in the app source code did I have ActivityAboutUs.java That might be the cause of your problem.

Answer 2

Well prowleragant application is a norton symantec application. Haven't seen it myself and couldn't find a download link of it. This app was removed from market, and the word market suggests that it was an old application. But a part of norton it may be present in the norton antivirus for android, haven't decompiled it will do later, as soon as my pc gets in a working state. And yes you answered it correctly, and it's not a personal or other antivirus or sandbox agent. And and antivirus can implement it's structure to get activity data of the app, that suggests for the application to be checked for it's reputation, it's internet activity and data structure, so as to recognize a potential malware or a virus. Here check some links about it :

http://www.bestappsmarket.com/p/app?appId=961494&title=com-symantec-starmobile-prowler-sample

https://plus.google.com/+LitrikDeRoy/posts/cfsKZC1oCa4

https://github.com/codlab/cypherapp/issues/20