Identifying application sources on non-rooted devices

A method and apparatus for identifying an application source from which an application is installed on a non-rooted computing device. An application source identifier of a security application that does not have root access to an operating system monitors for an application installation. The application source identifier extracts a process identifier (PID) of the application being installed from a log message associated with the application installation and determines a package name from the PID. The PID identifies an application source from which the application is installed. The application source identifier receives, based on the package name, a confidence level for the application source from a security service over a network.