Mobile Malware Development Continues To Rise, Android Leads The Way

What happens when anyone can develop and publish an application to the Android Market? A 472% increase in Android malware samples since July 2011. These days, it seems all you need is a developer account, that is relatively easy to anonymize, pay $25 and you can post your applications. With no upfront review process, no one checking to see that your application does what it says, just the world’s largest majority of smartphone users skimming past your application’s description page with whatever description of the application the developer chooses to include. Sure, your application can be removed after the fact—if someone discovers that it is actually malicious and reports it. But, how many unsuspecting people are going to download it before it is identified as malicious and removed? This is precisely what is playing out in the mind of mobile malware developers today.

This approach has led to major increases in research into and discovery of vulnerabilities with in the Android platform as the delivery mechanisms of mobile malware. In our annual Malicious Mobile Threats Report, report, Juniper found a 400% increase in Android malware from 2009 to the summer of 2010. We have since seen exponential grow in Android malware over the last several months. The Juniper Global Threat Center found that the months of October and November are shaping up to see the fastest growth in Android malware discovery in the history of the platform. The number of malware samples identified in September increased by 28% over the number of the known Android malware samples. October showed a 110% increase in malware sample collection over the previous month and a striking 171% increase from what had been collected up to July 2011.

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Juniper Global Threat Center