Telecom Lead India: According to McAfee, Google Play store will face mobile security threats.
According to McAfee Labs, 75 percent of the malware-infected apps downloaded by McAfee Mobile Security users, who are apt to be more security conscious than the average consumer, were housed in the Google Play store, and that the average consumer has a one in six chance of downloading a risky app.
Nearly 25 percent of the risky apps that contain malware also contain suspicious URLs, and 40 percent of malware families misbehave in more than one way.
Luis Blando, vice president of mobile product development at McAfee, says despite elevated consumer awareness of threats on mobile platforms, there is still a significant knowledge gap surrounding how and when devices become infected and the level of potential damage.
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According to McAfee Labs, the following threats will encounter in 2013:
Risky Apps:
Cybercriminals are going to great lengths to insert infected apps into trusted sources such as Google Play and the risks within each app are becoming more intricate.
Black Market Activity:
Botnet clients, downloaders, and rootkits are generic, useful software sold on black markets as part of software toolkits. Criminals use these to commit premium SMS and click fraud, spam distribution, data theft, or bank fraud – and the complexity of these criminal activities is growing. Commercial criminals are now reusing and recombining these components to devise new, profitable schemes.
Drive-by Downloads:
The first mobile drive-by downloads were seen in 2012 and we expect these to increase in 2013. On a mobile device, a drive-by download fools a user into downloading an app without knowing it. Once a user opens the app, criminals have access to the device.
Near Field Communication:
In 2013, we expect to see criminals abuse the tap-and-pay near field communications (NFC) technology used in mobile payment programs, or digital wallets. This scam uses worms that propagate through proximity, a process we can call bump and infect. The distribution path can quickly spread malware through a group of people such as in a passenger-loaded train or at an amusement park.
When the newly infected device is used to “tap and pay” for the next purchase, the scammer collects the details of the wallet account and secretly reuses these credentials to steal from the wallet. Worm malware like this will spread by exploiting vulnerabilities on devices. This development would monetize the 11.8 percent of malware families that already contain exploit behaviors.
As the mobile space evolves, criminals will look at ways to generate revenue from features only mobile devices have. During 2012, about 16 percent of malware families detected by McAfee attempted to get devices to subscribe to premium SMS messages.
In 2013, McAfee foresees an increase in threats that will have users finding out they bought premium apps only when they check their bills.
