REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Total Defense, Inc. today announced the findings of its 2011 Internet
Security Threat Intelligence Report, which indicates Android’s rise in
market share was only surpassed by the amount of malware targeted at
Android devices. In total, over 25 times more Android Malware was
identified in 2011.
“This past year can be viewed as the year of Android malware with more
than 9,000 escalations, clearly illustrating the exponential growth of
threats targeting this platform,” said Paul Lipman, CEO at Total
Defense. “The rise of Android malware opens up an interesting debate
about security architectures and the merits of open versus closed
systems. While users have the ability to install any code, from
anywhere, the problem is that criminals see this as an advantage too.”
The Threat Intelligence Report identified and analyzed the most
notorious Android malware in 2011 that used social engineering tricks to
lure users:
-
AndroidOS/Foncy: an SMS-Trojan that differentiates itself from
others in this category by choosing different destination message
centers based on country code. -
AndroidOS/Dogowar: a Trojan created by malware authors socially
motivated to stop animal cruelty. -
AndroidOS/Fakeneflic.A: a Trojan belonging to the InfoStealer
category that tricks users by disguising itself as popular software
that requires login credentials. If the user is successfully tricked,
the entered credentials will be posted to a hosted website. -
AndroidOS/WalkSteal.A: a unique SMS-Trojan created with the
intention to “teach” a lesson to the users who are interested in using
pirated applications. -
AndroidOS/FakePlayer.A: an SMS-Trojan that uses a familiar
social engineering trick of disguising as a media player. When
executed, it sends four SMS messages to a premium number. -
AndroidOS/Golddream.A: a Trojan that disguises itself as gaming
applications where upon it monitors and records information about
incoming/outgoing calls, incoming SMS messages in plain text files
that is uploaded to a hardcoded URL
“The malware landscape is changing at a rapid pace with cyber-criminals
producing new malware variants at an exponential rate,” said Lipman.
“The proliferation of consumer digital devices for convenient Internet
access coupled with our global socio-economic climate continues to serve
up a perfect storm for online criminal activity. Our goal is to empower
end-users with solutions that can provide them complete protection in
this dangerous digital world.”
The report also details that the movement toward the “App-Paradigm,”
whereby PCs become more appliance-like and only authorized applications
can be installed and run, can dramatically decrease the attack surface
for digital devices. The Total Defense Research Team suggests major
platform vendors can do more – Microsoft can lock-down Windows 8 to a
greater extent on the PC by enticing more Metro App development and
Google can better secure Android Apps by offering certified applications
via their Android Marketplace.
In addition, the report chronicles the acts of hacktivism that have
transpired over the past year, including activity by well-known groups
LulzStorm, Anonymous and LulzSec. News of hacktivism exploits have had a
snowball effect and given rise to more politically motivated cybercrime
worldwide with multiple foreign governments and websites coming under
attack from their political enemies. In addition, the report covers
specific activity around organized crimeware, including the
high-profile, successful take-downs of the large-scale DNS-Changer,
Rustock and Coreflood Botnets, as well as the arrest of the co-founder
of ChronoPay, a Russian online payment processor, which processed the
sales of leading FakeAV. While law enforcement and cloud security
controls have put a dent in large scale Malware attacks in 2011, threats
remain extremely high.
For a full copy of the Total Defense 2011 Internet Security Threat
Intelligence Report, please visit: http://www.totaldefense.com
ABOUT TOTAL DEFENSE, INC.
Total Defense is a global leader in malware detection and anti-crimeware
solutions. Over 50,000 businesses across a wide spectrum of industries
have deployed the Company’s solutions, including some of the most
sophisticated buyers of security technology worldwide, and over four
million consumers worldwide use Total Defense’s products. The Company’s
solutions include anti-malware, anti-virus, parental controls, intrusion
prevention, mobile security, online back-up and PC optimization. Total
Defense is a former business of CA Technologies, one of the largest
software companies in the world, and has operations in New York,
California, Europe and Asia.
For more information, please visit www.totaldefense.com
Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/total-defense-2011-threat-report-170900325.html
View full post on National Cyber Security » Virus/Malware/Worms