Malware has become such a consistent problem across the mobile landscape that some are calling the unfortunate trend a virtual epidemic.
Although Google has worked diligently to crack down on Malware on the Android platform, malicious threats persist. As Tech Crunch reported Monday, Android’s malware problem has “surged in the third quarter.”
Security firm F-Secure’s latest mobile threat report (for Q3) reports “a whopping 51,447 unique samples” detected in the third quarter, up from 5,033 in Q2 and 3,063 in Q1.
So will Android remain a huge target for these dangerous digital entities? The answer, sadly, is yes. After all, Android now makes up approximately 75 percent of all new smartphone shipments globally.
Perhaps most frightening, it’s difficult to determine exactly where a lot of this malware came from in the first place.
“We can’t produce stats on the amount of malware from Google Play vs elsewhere as most of our samples come via anonymized sources,” says Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure’s chief research officer.
To read the report in full, click here.