30 Percent of Mobile Malware Made By 10 Russian Firms

An anonymous reader writes "Almost a third of all mobile malware is made by 10 Russian organizations, according to Lookout Mobile Security. It made that claim after looking at its detections for this year, and after an investigation that uncovered the malware HQs' operations, which saw thousands of affiliates working alongside the factories to dupe users into downloading rogue apps. Those apps are fairly crude, sending SMS messages to premium rate numbers in the background, whilst users think they have downloaded a legitimate application. Lookout isn't revealing the names of the malware factories, however, nor is it divulging how far law enforcement are involved in cracking down on the Russian organizations. It is presenting its full findings at the DEF CON 21 conference."

Comments

Pharming

[AmiMoJo]

Congrats to the Russians fir finding a way to farm stupidity.

Re:Pharming

[lightknight]

And as an American, let me warn our Russian colleagues, that no way will the United States be outdone in this realm. We have consultants standing by, with suitcases filled with newly printed money, ready to get out there and spend, spend, spend to make us #1!

30 Percent of Mobile Malware Made By 10 Russian Fi

[phantomfive]

The rest courtesy of NSA Labs.

Re:At least Android is safe

[phantomfive]

No one ever said that. They just said it's a lot more secure than Windows (and before Microsoft got on their security kick, Windows was basically an open door).

Now the most insecure parts of either OS is not the OS itself, but software running on the OS......

Re:lookout who?

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

From what I recall, Lookout Mobile Security was founded in San Francisco in 2008. They started as an iOS shop, but moved over to Android, and their security product is probably one of the most used on that platform. I do not recall having any contact with employees, but they publish some decent research on their blog at https://blog.lookout.com/.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Borders induced problem?

[icebike]

I've heard it said that the reason people resort to untrusted sources is because official markets (Apple App store, or Google Play store, Amazon, etc) are not available in many countries, or the prices, designed for western economies, are simply not affordable in second and third world countries.

I don'k know a single person that installs apps from some random dodgy website. Or perhaps they do, but just don't admit it. Maybe its much more common with kids who don't have credit cards.

But overall, resorting to third-party installation sources seems much rarer in those countries there there is affordable equal-access to the legitimate markets. Malware penetration into the official markets is not unheard of, but it is surely minuscule compared to the "cracked apps" sites.

The protections and limitations placed on the official markets by some countries seem to inflict more harm than what ever they thought they were protecting their citizens from.