Almost all new mobile malware targets Android Phones

According to a report, 99.9 percent of all the new malware that were detected in the first quarter of 2013 have been designed to prey on Android phones...

Anujeet Majumdar|May 23, 2013, 13:43:56 IST

Malware has always been a pressing issue for Android, which is the worlds most popular and fast-selling smartphone operating system. While this fact has been known, and unwillingly accepted for years, according to a new report that has been released, the situation seems to going from bad to worse.

According to the report by Kaspersky Lab, 99.9 percent of all the new malware that were detected in the first quarter of 2013 have been designed to prey on Android phones. In total, 22,750 new modifications of malicious programs targeting mobile devices were detected this past quarter. That number is clearly up more than half the total number of modifications seen throughout 2012.

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Out of the threats detected, the largest chunk comes in the form of trojan viruses, which according to what Mashable reported, is used quite a lot. The most common trojan seen here are SMS trojans, which steal money by sending out unauthorised texts to premium numbers. The total amount of infection stood at 63 percent. Cover

Malware infection for Android smartphones will be increasing this year

Some of the most seen infections include the SMS Trojans from the Opfake family – "Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Opfake.a", which accounts for 12.23 percent of infection rates and "Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Opfake.bo", which infected 11.49 percent of users. Today these malwares are disguised as new versions of other popular apps such as Skype or Angry Birds.

According to the report, nearly 60 percent of all malicious hosts are located in the US, Russia and the Netherlands. If you have to rank the most "popular" malware, the first place this past quarter has to go to "Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakeInst.a", which stands at 29.45 percent. This threat primarily goes for the Russian speaking Internet users who are attempting to download software for Android devices from dubious sites. The trick that most cybercriminals use on these websites is to spread malware while passing them off as useful software.

Apart from the mobile world, the report also talks about malicious links which comprise 91 percent of total threats seen in 2013. It’s clear from these numbers that hackers prefer this method of infecting victims. The most common repercussion of attacks like this, is too see an almost endless series of Twitter hacks.