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Mobile security issues are still threatening smartphone banking

JT | November 6, 2015

Trojans and other threats continue to be a serious concern when it comes to money matters over cell phones.

Kaspersky Lab, the online and mobile security company, has now released its most recent quarterly report on its analysis of the evolution of threats that consumers were facing during the third quarter of 2015.

The analysis involved the detection of more than 300,000 new mobile malware programs.

That considerable figure represented an increase of 10.8 percent over the number of threatening mobile security programs that were detected in the second quarter. The primary technique that was used in order to profit from the mobile threats was the display of intrusive ads to consumers on their smartphones and tablets. Adware has seen a growing trend over the mobile channel and in this most recent report, it represented over half of all threats that were detected for these devices during the third quarter.

The report also described the different types of mobile security attack methods most commonly used.

Mobile Security - Mobile Banking For instance, some types of mobile cyber attack involve the use of super-user privileges (that is, root access) in order to hide the fact that they are present within the systems folder. This makes them much tougher to spot and overcome. At the same time, the report noted that the number of SMS Trojans have been falling. In fact, during the third quarter, they made up only 6.2 percent of the threats that were detected.

Though mobile banking threats had seen somewhat of a reduction, they remain a serious concern. During the second quarter, there had been 5.9 million notifications, whereas the third quarter saw 5.68 million notifications. The decrease was definitely there, but at the same time, it was not great enough to be able to say that the problem is any less serious.

Kaspersky Lab Solutions reported blocking nearly 636,000 attempts to launch types of mobile security threats such as malware that would be able to steal money by way of the device user’s online banking. That figure was 17.2 percent smaller than it had been the quarter beforehand. Mobile banking Trojans were most likely to occur in Austria.

Mobile security technology provides a malware protection boost

BWild | April 1, 2015

A new form of tech developed by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers is simple but effective.

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham have now come up with a new form of mobile security protection that uses certain simple but highly effective techniques that are able to stop sophisticated malware from sneaking their way into smartphones in order to attack them.

The development of this type of protection against mobile malware has become vitally important.

As well over half of all American adults now have smartphones, mobile security has become critical to providing protection against malware and other forms of cyber attack. While it is well recognized that computers such as laptops and desktops require this type of protection – typically in the form of firewalls and antivirus programs – many mobile device owners don’t realize how vulnerable their smartphones truly are. Moreover many of the apps that are available to protect devices take up too much space and require too much power.

This new mobile security technology has been developed to overcome those problems for improved protection.

Mobile Security - Malware Protection The new form of mobile malware defense technology was revealed in St. Louis at the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications. As smartphones become more important and more commonplace, they have become prime targets to people who would seek to use them for malicious activities. This has caused an explosion in malware that can enter into mobile devices by way of any number of sources.

Primarily, this involves hidden malicious codes buried inside downloaded apps. Once they have been installed into mobile technology devices, there are various ways in which it can then exploit the gadget. This can include learning sensitive personal information about the user, taking over the camera to spy on the user, or even making premium rate phone calls without the user ever being aware that this is occurring.

It may even activate the NFC (near field communication technology) in the device for an entirely new form of mobile security problem – scanning for nearby credit cards that are NFC enabled for contactless payments. The researchers have come up with a way to more effectively block this type of digital invasion.