Tag: smartphone security

Mobile security concerns exist in parking meter apps

| December 15, 2015

A recent investigation from NCC Group has revealed that these applications are vulnerable to being hacked.

Researchers from NCC Group have now completed an investigation that has revealed that there could be greater mobile security concerns associated with parking meter apps than most users likely realize.

The researchers explained that many of these mobile apps are open to cyber attacks from hackers.

Companies using mobile apps to allow people to pay for their parking in the United Kingdom have been doing so in order to offer additional convenience through this alternative method. However, according to this research, the people who are using these apps may also be increasing their risk of mobile security problems. This typically affects people who have smartphones based on the Apple and Android operating systems.

It was the mobile security of the Android applications that underwent the majority of the investigation by NCC.

Mobile Security - Image of parking metersThe researchers looked into the various kinds of security vulnerabilities that can impact these specific kinds of mobile apps. They wanted to look into those applications as a whole opposed to examining individual apps and labeling them as somehow different than the rest. Therefore, they did not name the specific apps that were studied in the report. Instead, they published their results in general with regards to the paid parking apps in general.

The assessment of the security of these apps was focused on the amount of attack surface that was available on Android based smartphones, including the vendor’s APK and any data that would be stored on the mobile device because of the interactions with the online support servers. At the same time, throughout this research, there was no time at which investigations were made into problems that could result from manipulating data sent to the server. Therefore, this research did not represent the same level of results that would have been achieved if the apps had undergone thorough penetration testing.

The mobile security conclusion of the team at NCC was that almost all the applications they investigated had been “affected by security vulnerabilities – some more serious than others.” They pointed out that their cryptographic implementation mediocrity was among the most common trends from one to the next.

Mobile security issues are still threatening smartphone banking

| 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 BankingFor 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.