With a majority of smartphone users adopting Android as their mobile platform, over 4 lakh Android malware were detected during the January-March period this year, security solutions firm Quick Heal said today.
"Total Android malware detected by Quick Heal was over 4 lakhs, Android adware consisted of almost 89 per cent detections," Quick Heal said in its 'quarterly threat report' for January-March, 2014.
It said 80 per cent of the smartphone users adopt Android as their mobile platform. "The massive rise in Android phone, tablet users and the unregulated nature of Android application markets, has led to an exponential growth in the numbers of malware," the report said. Quick Heal said Android adware finds its way into smartphones through the myriad free applications that users install. A large portion of these applications come from unauthorised third-party sources which are unregulated and unmonitored. "Such adware proves to be extremely dangerous as it steals confidential data and often goes undetected by the users," the report said. The security firm said upcoming trend for Android malware indicated, high social network usage that can lure many fake applications into extracting personal details and stealing money of users. For Windows, the report said malicious software detections went up by approximately 20 per cent since December 2013. "This quarter, over 10 million malware detected for windows, Adware accounted 25 per cent malware detection," the report said. It said for Windows users, dominant security breach over the last quarter was 'Heartbleed', which found its way through the open SSL technology.
As a result, a large number of passwords were exposed and dangerously, about 50 per cent of these passwords are yet unchanged. Quick Heal said the Upcoming trends for Windows malware indicates that in the absence of windows XP support, more blatant attacks will be seen. Cloud-based computing is another open ground for the attackers in the coming quarter. "The prime objective of these cybercriminals is data theft, they manipulate this data in multiple ways for personnel gains," Quick Heal Technologies Founder and CFO Sanjay Katkar said. KIR RAH
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