The Cybercriminals are setting their eyes on new Android devices, as 750,000 Android malware apps are found in the first quarter of 2017, this means, almost 8,400 new malware cases are found every single day.
According to the security firm G Data by the end of this year, it is expected that there will be a 3.5 million new Android malware samples are discovered, up from the amount of 3.25 million discovered in the last year.
On the good side, the year had a slow start compared to 2016, less malware files directed at Android devices were found. However, the threat level for the users of tablets and smartphones running on the Android still remains high.
Often the firm points out, that the issue starts from the fact that the older devices do not get updated to latest Android versions. As a matter of fact, only a tiny 4.9 percent of tablet and smartphone users have the Android 7 Nougat, which is available since August 2016. Over 31 percent run Android 6.0 Marshmallow and over 32% run Android 5.0 Lollipop. Another 20 percent of users run Android KitKat.
“The problem is that third party providers do not adopt the new operating system for older devices (“older” in this case meaning one year or more). Sometimes, newer operating system updates are not published at all. Hence, in many cases, it can take a long time before any updates are provided. That is if they are provided at all,” the company notes.
This is a major difference between mobile devices and PCs running Windows for instance because mobile buyers cannot estimate for how long they’ll receive the latest security fixes for.
That being said, the users need to be very cautious so they do not get infected, starting with the installation of a virus scanner.