"Kaspersky Lab" on the outcome of 2012: the explosive growth of threats to Android and mobile spying

Experts "Kaspersky Lab" on the analysis of mobile threats in the past year have come to the conclusion that the Android platform finally became a prime target for virus writers and fraudsters in mobile networks, and cyber espionage and tracking program, developed with the participation of government agencies, is now clearly focused and mobile devices. Most notable in 2012 was the growth of a variety of threats to the operating system Android. If in 2011 the experts "Kaspersky Lab" found 5,300 new malicious programs for this platform, in 2012 a similar number of new malicious programs are found within a month. In total, over the past year, analysts have found more than 6 million unique malware for Android. Platform has become the absolute leader in the ranking distribution of mobile attacks: the share of Android in 2012 was 94% of all mobile malware (for comparison, in 2011 the figure was only 65%).

The most popular Android-SMS-malware were Trojans. They are aimed primarily at users in Russia. The second most popular group of malware are adware and Plangton Hamob. The third group includes various modifications Lotoor - exploits to get access rights on smartphones running different versions of Android. In addition, in 2012, experts said fairly widespread mobile banking Trojans. Most of these threats were again focused on the platform Android. Thus, mobile banking Trojans, intercepting SMS-message with authorization codes banking and sending them into the hands of cybercriminals, and in 2012 expanded its geography and appeared in Russia, where the users of online banking is growing. In particular, in 2012, the experts "Kaspersky Lab" found a mobile version of the famous Trojan Carberp, which was distributed through a phishing website home page of a major Russian bank. Finally, one of the most important discoveries in 2012 was the confirmation of the fact that cyber espionage program to collect data not only with computers but also on mobile devices. The investigation kibershpionskoy operation "Red October" experts "Kaspersky Lab" received evidence that the malware tried to gather information about the targeted user's mobile device, the list of contacts stored on it, the information from the call log, SMS-messages, calendar, notes, history Internet surfing and a variety of text and image files and documents. And that's just one step.