Published in Mobiles

99 per cent of Mobile Viruses for Android

by on01 May 2014



Although there are still not that many

It seems that if a virus writer is going to bother writing a hack for a mobile, they are only going to do it for Andriod. A new report from security outfit F-Secure said that virus writers are ignoring the chance to download a complete Coldplay collection from Apple phones and are instead writing code for Android.

More than 99 per cent of viruses are being written for Android with only two new ones written for the iPhone or Symbian this year. To be fair, we are not taking about a big threat to mobiles. F-Secure detected just 277 new threat families, of which 275 honed in on Android. Of the remaining two, one targeted iPhone and the other set Symbian. If you compare it to PC land, it would appear that hackers still have not become very excited about mobile yet, although the problem is growing. During the same quarter a year ago, F-Secure detected 149 new threat families and variants, of which 91 percent were designed to exploit Android.

Mikko Hyppönen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure said that there would be more viruses written in coming months. Mobile phones are getting more powerful, making it possible for cybercriminals to profit by using them to mine for cryptocurrencies."

The vast majority of mobile Trojans, 83 percent, send SMS messages to premium numbers or SMS-based subscription services. After that, the most common form of mischief includes downloading or installing unsolicited files or apps.

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