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F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013
An anonymous reader writes "Back in 2012, Android accounted for 79 percent of all mobile malware. Last year, that number ballooned even further to 97 percent. Both those data points come from security firm F-Secure, which today released its 40-page Threat Report for the second half of 2013. More specifically, Android malware rose from 238 threats in 2012 to 804 new families and variants in 2013. Apart from Symbian, F-Secure found no new threats for other mobile platforms last year."
So let's not make a mountain out of a whorehill.
Linux is secure, right? Isn't Android Linux?
This is what you get running unsigned code from anywhere people! The last 30+ years of malware on Amiga, DOS, Windows, Unix, Linux, etc. should be a lesson. Trust code to execute by default and this is what you get. Rely entirely on the end user to determine whether or not code is legitimate, and this is what you get.
The average Joe is not capable of making that decision. Sure, it sucks, but them's the breaks.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
think of why it exists: it gets google your eyeballs and your time. with that, they are wildly successful.
beyond that, they could give a flying fuck. seriously. they don't exist for user experience, safety, privacy (ha!) or quality. as long as its 'good enough' to keep eyeballs glued there, that's all they care about.
I can't wait for a true '3rd option' (not apple and not android) to come on the market. I don't enjoy or trust either of the two existing choices.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Let me guess... they counted the same malware once for each make and model of phone it affected?
Not surprised . When will I be able to run a full distro on one of them phones?
Google's abandonment of API's once they are moved into Google Play would have to have no small part in this.
It sounds nice in the hacker world, but in the hands of the 'average Joe', an "Open Handset" is an invitation to have your bank account stolen.
But seriously, malware tends to target the top player in the market (by numbers). Nothing really to see here.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is really only news if they managed to get apps into a reputable app store, in particular Google Play. If they got malware into some chinese android piracy site, that's not news.
Hey look, the second half of the headline, suspiciously omitted covers this: "but only 0.1% of those were on Google Play"
Whichever marketing droid for $AndroidCompetitor who got this slanted summary onto slashdot has earned his money.
We've just leaned that an iOS bug has left it wide open for how many years? OSX too...and the patch/hole was just released/announced last week?
By default most Android phones (which today means made by Samsung) will not install anything from outside the Google Play store, and in the case of only Samsung phones outside the Google Play store and the Samsung store. Most users do not adjust this setting, so virtually nobody is susceptible to this malware. F-Secure is making mountains out of molehills.
If you don't use a Samsung Android phone, I commend your spirit of adventure. It's not worth the hassle for me. There's where you start becoming susceptible to this type of malware, among other problems.
But don't catch me saying that Samsung phones are the best. They're just what everybody else is using and helping debug so I don't have to.
At the very bottom of the list was Google Play itself, with the lowest percentage of malware in the gathered samples: 0.1 percent. F-Secure also noted that “the Play Store is most likely to promptly remove nefarious applications, so malware encountered there tends to have a short shelf life.” While that’s great news for most Android users, it
Why would anybody shop for apps on their android phone/tablet like a crack addict looking for their next hit is beyond me. Are people really that naive?
Android isn't Linux, it's a Linux distribution. It runs on a Linux kernel and is as much Linux as Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora. But it's not Linux.
The problem isn't really the OS. The problem is the rights the users and publishers are given. If anyone can side-load an app it's easy to get malware since there's no one but the user to verify the source.
I don't believe that restrictions work. People will just root or jailbrake and smaller businesses will have a harder time getting their apps out since they will have to be reviewed before they can get on a device running that OS.
The only proper solution is informing and teaching the end user about how to avoid malicious software.
Since everyone says that only stupid people use iPhones, all Android users should have the tech expertise to navigate the malware minefield right? /s
No one uses it so no one cares to exploit.
See, Microsoft is deliberately making their OS crap so there will be less mallware for it.
I remember the hoops I had to go through to run a JavaME program on my own damn Sprint phone. At least Sprint would let you. But it was enough of a pain that I simply gave up on the platform. If you don't have the developers you don't have the apps.
"...but only 0.1% of those were on Google Play"
So that vast majority is practically all third-party installations (something which isn't even an option on iOS).
Fearmongering is central to the business model of all the "antivirus" scam artists.
why does an app ( from google play) which just produces fart sounds ( just like 80% of the other apps) want permissions to access my browser bookmarks , call information, data store and what not .
That is beyond my understanding
So both yours and your kids 2 year old phones are running the previous major version release of their respective operating system (as Android 3.x was never released for phones). What was your point again?
Surely the software wasn't that bad without malicious intent.
To the "anonymous reader" who posted the main article : If you link to TFA, at least post the less misleading title it used:
Makes a world of difference. And yes, shame on you.
It's possible to download Android apk's at developers sites as well as other places,
be nice to scan them for malware before transferring/installing them to the Android.
An example is AdAway which I assume is safe from malware, you can't download this from play.google.com
https://f-droid.org/repository...
I've Googled this query and have gotten no results, figure I'd hit on a geek :}
if 0.1% out of the 804 were on the play store.. Then there was only one app that made it on the play store..
As others have said, the walled gardens are *EXTREMELY* safe. iOS App Store and Google Play are both *VERY* safe.
Jailbroken iPhones are targets, but most people concerned with open platforms are on Android - and sadly Google has gotten people used to "going off-reservation" for some apps. (Is Kindle Market available to install direct from Google Play yet? Or do you still need to root and side-load?)
Symbian is effectively dead (the former leader of malware,) and Palm is all but buried at this point. Not sure about CrackBerry's ecosystem. Microsoft's is basically as safe as Apple's.
That leaves Android as the only reasonable target for malware. Sort of like how in the '80s, Macintosh was the primary target for viruses, as it was the most likely to be networked - then as Windows got internet-connected, it became the prime target.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
http://www.f-secure.com/static...
The content of interest here starts on page 22.
It'd be nice if TFA actually included a link. Or even cited the fucking source of the graphics they lifted.
Android is the most popular mobile OS. Sounds like it not how secure you are, but how obscure you are. That is the only real security.
what other Mobile OS? apart from iOS which has a much strickter policy on what goes into their store and is mostly paid.. Also how much malware is actually from software from the play-store and how much by sideloading (which isn't even possible on iOS without jailbreaking)
That isn't to say there are some very obvious things that Android lacks which would help protect people from their own stupidity. Fine grained security permissions that can applied regardless of what the app says it needs upfront. All untrusted apps should have the most stringent set of permissions applied to them. If someone wants to go in and disable the permissions then they can do so, but defaulting to safe would prevent a lot of harm even before it could happen.
Seriously!
Since none of this malware can get onto the devices without explicit user action, this F-Secure Threat Report is totally bogus ..
but, but, Steve Jobs parked in handicap spaces... and there is like one proof-of-concept virus that surfaced lately and that's, like, a proof that iOs is like super bad and unsecure. And even though Google is the first company to have collaborated with the NSA (anyone still wondering how Google got so big so fast?) and with oppressive regime to help them catch dissident one of the founder said "don't do evil" is their moto so like, they will never do evil, they said it.
BUT using Androïd makes me feel like I am some sort of computing genius and, like, I'm SUPER original because I don't use iOs, I'm, like, a rebel or something, let me get my Guy Fawkes mask you'll see. /sarcasm ;)
...the old Windows meme submerging the fact that Windows really was a piece of swiss cheese.
Most of the stuff on
Maybe I'm conflating several notions from your post, but I get the distinct feeling you liken Apple products as being in a cage. I can tell you it's more like being in Club Med with hot cocktail waitresses and sunny days with the chain link fence holding back hordes of lepers.
This entire decade, all I've heard was how fully vetted open source gave you freedom and security at the same time. Write all the code you want and run it everywhere. Safely. Freely.
The GnuTLS Library bug tells me it's all been BS. To that end, why should I trust any random developer's software, certificate or not? Isn't everyone in the open source community supposed to be looking at the code? Actually looking at it? You just can't trust anything these days.
Most of the stuff on
So 91% of all mallware was for Android systems last year - woohooo. Maybe that is because 81% of all phones are running Android platforms. If you were a hacker trying to infect a phone system - would you target the 19% that are not running Android - or the 81% that are?
This is the same STUPID argument that Apple made for years about they not having any issues with hackers, versus the Windows systems that were constantly attacked. Never occured to them that paltry share of the market they represented in PC sales, just wasn't worth the trouble by the hackers. It never was that they couldn't be hacked or have malware - they simple were to irrrelevent to be targeted.
If you track the increase in Android as the OS for smart phones, you see a coresponding rise in the number of malware that are targeting it. This is not rocket science - it is supply and demand. As the supply of phones that do not use Android falls, the likelyhood that a hacker will write mallware for those systems plumets.
But I bet old F-Secure is more than willing to sell you a piece of software to protect you. They are drumming up fear to increase sales.