More bad news for Google’s little green robot. In fact, may have finally figured out why he’s green – he’s sick with malware.
According to the presented findings of F-Secure‘s latest Mobile Threat Report, there’s been a drop in malware targeting the Symbian platform, representing just four percent of all mobile threats detected in Q4 2012.
That’s about the only “good news” in the report.
301 total new threat families and variants were detected in 2012. Android malware continued to gain in its share, responsible for 79 percent of all threats for the year, up from 66 percent in 2011.
“Malware in general has a parasitic relationship with its host,” said Sean Sullivan, Security Advisor at F-Secure Labs. “As old Symbian handsets continue to be replaced by those with other operating systems, especially Android, Symbian malware dies off and will probably go extinct in 2013. May it rest in peace.”
Sullivan says 66 percent of mobile malware detections in 2012 were trojans.
A large share of the Android threats found in Q4 were malware that generate profit through fraudulent SMS practices.
