lunes, 24 de febrero de 2014

Mobile Malware Evolution: 2013

The mobile malware sector is growing rapidly both technologically and structurally. It is safe to say that today’s cybercriminal is no longer a lone hacker but part of a serious business operation.

There are various types of actors involved in the mobile malware industry: virus writers, testers, interface designers of both the malicious apps and the web pages they are distributed from, owners of the partner programs that spread the malware, and mobile botnet owners.

This division of labor among the cybercriminals can also be seen in the behavior of their Trojans. In 2013, there was evidence of cooperation (most probably on a commercial basis) between different groups of virus writers. For example, the botnet Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Opfake.a, in addition to its own activity, also spread Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a by sending spam containing a link to the malware to the victim’s list of contacts.

It is now clear that a distinct industry has developed and is becoming more focused on extracting profits, which is clearly evident from the functionality of the malware.

2013 in figures

A total of 143,211 new modifications of malicious programs targeting mobile devices were detected in all of 2013 (as of January 1, 2014).
In 2013, 3,905,502 installation packages were used by cybercriminals to distribute mobile malware. Overall in 2012-2013 we detected approximately 10,000,000 unique malicious installation packages:

The number of installation packages detected in 2012-2013

Different installation packages can install programs with the same functionality that differ only in terms of the malicious app interface and, for instance, the content of the text messages it spreads.

Android remains a prime target for malicious attacks. 98.05% of all malware detected in 2013 targeted this platform, confirming both the popularity of this mobile OS and the vulnerability of its architecture.