Malware in the mobiles is at the highest level recorded yet, infecting about 1.35 percent of all mobile devices in the October, according to the study by Nokia which is today. The high mark in October compares to figures of about 1.06 percent in April 2016.
While the Android smartphones and tablets stayed as the top mobile target (81 percent), iOS-based devices were also on rise, particularly through the spy phone applications, in second half of last year (about 4 percent). The Spyphone surveillance software (sometimes named as spousal or child monitoring tech) tracks the user’s calls, social media applications, web searches, text messages, GPS locations or many other activities.
Nokia’s Threat Intelligence Report is issued twice per year and it examines general trends and statistics for various infections in devices connected through the mobile and the fixed networks globally. These figures came from deployments of the Nokia NetGuard Endpoint Security(NES) a network-based anti-malware kit. The Windows/PC systems made up to 5 percent of malware infections in second half of 2016, this number is down from 22 percent in the first half of this year.
While adware which has a moderate threat level has its activity decreased in the second half of 2016, with high-level threats (eg, rootkits, keyloggers, bots, and banking Trojans) remained same at approximately 6 percent.
Separately the security firm Skycure reported that 71 percent of the mobile devices remain highly prone to breaches as they are two months or more behind on the latest security patches. Six percent of the devices run patches that are more than six months old. The figure is based on an analysis of the patch updates among the five leading wireless carriers in the US. Skycure reports a six-fold increase in mobile malware infections between Q1 2016 and Q4 2016.
Almost half of Android vulnerabilities logged last year allowed excessive privileges, while others allowed other bad effects, like corrupted memory, arbitrary code execution or leakage of information.
source: theregister