Malware and Ransomware still a Huge Problem for Android Users
A Korean report painfully reports today that it has been found that the hacking attacks targeting Android-based mobile devices are rapidly diversifying these days. For example, mobile security solution provider 360 Security recently announced that the damage attributable to mobile ransomware amounted to 95.6 billion won (US$86,707,450.00) worldwide last year and more than 900,000 devices were infected between June 2013 and the first quarter of this year.
The number of rooting attempts is soaring as well. AhnLab collected approximately 46,000 malicious rooting app samples in the first half of this year, about four times that of the second half of last year. AhnLab explained that most of those malicious rooting apps are for information and data theft and ad exposure.
Some experts point out that this can be attributed to the lack of efforts on the part of companies leading the Android ecosystem such as Google.
"Security examination is insufficient with regard to app development environments and Google Play registration procedures and this is leading to an increase in the number of insecure apps and fake apps," one of them mentioned.
According to mobile app security company Seworks, approximately 80% of the applications available on the Google Play store are vulnerable to hacking and 83% of the top 200 free apps are prone to the possibility of decompile-based forgery and falsification.
In addition, 95% of popular free apps with native library files and 82% of popular paid apps that have such files are vulnerable to forgery and falsification based on reverse engineering.
Apple takes about 2 or 3 days to approve an app on the App Store. Google's approves it within a day for Google Play. Perhaps Google should do their customers a big favor and catch the bugs and vulnerabilities at the door instead of having their customers pay a heavy price.
For a public company, Google makes it all but impossible to reach them easily by phone for a problem. The government should step in and demand that all public companies have to have an easy access phone number to answer all consumer complaints. Google cuts corners and everything is done online. And if your question doesn't find the right forum or someone in general to help you in a forum, you're simply screwed; Shame on Google.
In contrast, Apple makes sure, the best that they can, that all apps on the App Store are checked for vulnerabilities and when a customer has a problem they have easy 1-800 numbers to contact them with or they could go to an Apple Store and talk with an Apple Genius. This is why Apple scores so high with customer service analyst reports.
In the end, Android is a nightmare for malware and has been from day one. In May we posted a report titled "Apple has known for Years that 99% of Malware is on Android and Now the FCC is investigating the Problem."
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