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You may have heard the statistic from Google that less than 0.05 percent of Android devices downloaded malware in 2016. It\u2019s a great statistic, and one that the company should be proud of.<\/p>\nYou may have heard the statistic from Google that less than 0.05 percent of Android devices downloaded malware in 2016. It\u2019s a great statistic, and one that the company should be proud of.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a statistic they\u2019re not talking about nearly as much: this year, the number of successful ransomware attacks against Android devices has more than doubled. This comes on the heels of a recent announcement by Lookout, a cyber-security firm, that discovered literally thousands of malicious apps on Google\u2019s Play Store.<\/p>\n
Until recently, the company seemed to be making all the right moves, and was one of the few firms that seemed to be beating the hackers at their own game. The robust series of checks and validations that apps have to go through before they find their way onto the Play Store seemed to be working\u2026right up until they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Now, the company has been rocked back on its heels and is scrambling to put additional security measures in place, and to delete the thousands of rogue apps on the store.<\/p>\n
According to Malwarebytes, the \u201cBig Three\u201d strains of ransomware Android users should be on the lookout for as follows:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Koler
\n\u2022 SLocker
\n\u2022 Jisut<\/p>\n
Collectively, these three accounted for fully 95 percent of all ransomware attacks against Android devices, although what\u2019s driving the hackers to suddenly focus on these three. and Android devices in particular, is unclear at this time.<\/p>\n
In addition to ransomware threats, the security firm Zscaler identified two ransomware threats in particular to be mindful of: he \u201cBubble Shooter Wild Life\u201d app, and the \u201cEarn Real Money Gift Card\u201d app.<\/p>\n
A look at the source code of the gift card app reveals it to be a cousin to \u201cBankBot,\u201d which is a family of malware quite popular among hackers. It succeeds by successfully manipulating Android\u2019s Accessibility permissions, which allows it to install other apps without the user\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n
All told, the stats paint a grim picture. Google certainly has its work cut out for it, and if you own an Android device, you\u2019ll want to be even more mindful of your device\u2019s security than usual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You may have heard the statistic from Google that less than 0.05 percent of Android devices downloaded malware in 2016. It\u2019s a great statistic, and one that the company should be proud of. Here\u2019s a statistic they\u2019re not talking about nearly as much: this year, the number of successful ransomware attacks against Android devices has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":25525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[34,30],"yoast_head":"\n