News by- Dr. Ramhari Subedi
As mobile phones are becoming very useful and very popular, threats level have also increased by 40%. We barely pay attention to updating software of mobile apps, updating operating systems, and installing released patches on smartphones. Firewalls, antivirus, and encryption are uncommon; mobile security countermeasures are slow to catch up.
Majority of users do not know how to enable basic security setting. Actively using phones for storing sensitive data, actively using social media, viewing email, saving passwords, calendars, contact information, purchasing goods and services, performing banking transaction, processing payment, paying at cash registers, and doing other sensitive activities without implementing security majors on the smartphones put you at a higher risk. Most people believe that surfing the internet through their phone is safer than the computer.
Mobile phones are becoming a target for cyber-attack. Researchers also said 85 million Android mobile devices are controlled by cyber-criminals with 200 applications installed on them. Firewall security vendors Check Point believes that 25% of 200 apps are malicious.
Today more than 99% of new mobile malware is designed to target Android, and 82% to Apple iPhone or iPads. Researchers say over 50,000 fraudulent apps installed on Android mobile device per day, each app costs around $0.15, as a results fraudsters daily gain of over $7,500 income. It might have compromised with Hummer Android Trojan virus around 1.2 million devices, being India the most affected country at around 154,000 compromised devices by Trojan virus. Source: US-Cert
