Cheetah Mobile, the world’s leading mobile
utility provider committed to providing a safer, faster and simpler mobile
internet experience, today announced findings from its latest global mobile
security report focused on Android devices.
The report details the growth of viruses, phishing sites,
malwares, infected devices across major markets (including India), data
leakages, and rounds out with security predictions for 2016. The Company’s
annual security report is cumulative data based on 567 million global monthly
active users and an overall install base of almost two billion users using
Cheetah Mobile’s utility applications on their devices.
In summary, the key trends in mobile security
for 2015 were:
· Android viruses rose sharply
o The number of Android viruses exceeded
9.5million, which is larger than twice the total number in the past three
years. Compared with 2014’s 2.8million, the growth rate of 2015 is over 22%.
· Root Trojans soared in 2015
o As it gains system-level privilege, Root
Trojans can take complete control of the device and are very hard to remove.
· Mobile payments have been targeted by viruses
o With the popularization of mobile payment, the
number of malwares targeting mobile banking has increased rapidly.
· Data leakage caused great damage
o Thousands of companies and hundreds of
millions of users have been affected by information leaks in 2015.
· Android vulnerabilities emerge one after
another
o From the Stage fright vulnerability which
affected 95% Android devices to the wormhole compromising millions, it seemed
like Android vulnerabilities would never end.
China, India and Indonesia were the three most severely
afflicted countries. Apart from large Android user bases, another reason of
these countries becoming the worst-hit ones is that third-party app markets are
prevailing in these areas, and most of these third-party app markets have been
contaminated by malwares due to the weak monitoring of third-party app markets.
Biggest Data Leaks
Anthem:
80 million customers’ and employees’ personal information
OPM:
About 27 million employees’ and applicants’ personal information
Ashley
Madison: 37 million users’ personal information
Hacking
Team: 400GB of data was leaked and scattered on the internet
The graph above represents the number of
unique infections detected across all devices that Cheetah Mobile is present on
in that market. Please note that this number doesn’t represent the total number
of devices that Cheetah Mobile’s applications are installed on in that
particular country but only the individual devices that were infected over the
span of 2015.
In the graphs below, one each for China, the
United States, and India, the numbers showcase the number of infections
overall. The data here means that a single device could have multiple
infections multiple times over the course of a year.
A Trojan horse
or Trojan is a type of malware that is often disguised as legitimate software.
Trojans can be employed by cyber-thieves and hackers trying to gain access to
users' systems. Users are typically tricked by some form of social engineering
into loading and executing Trojans on their systems. The manner in which they
behave differs – some hides in users’ mobile devices to steal text messages,
contact information, location data, and even personal photos. Others, like
Ghost Push, obtains root access to the affected device and installs more
malicious apps and a never ending stream of ads.
Mobile Security Predictions for 2016
* New security features in Android 5.0 Lollipop
and its successors are expected to make Android phones more secure.
* As Google Play is available in China, Chinese
app markets are expected to become more standardized and secure.
* More effective steps will be taken by Google
to enhance Android security in 2016.
* Globally, mobile payment methods will be
attacked more frequently.
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