Mobile Malware Report for Q1 2015

Mobile banking and online shopping are booming.

Fifty percent of U.S. consumers use a smartphone or tablet for their banking transactions, and 78 percent of Internet users make purchases online.

This is a trend that has also attracted the attention of cyber criminals recognizing the exploitation possibilities such as forced subscriptions via premium SMS or calls, extortion via ransomware, and remote control of money transfers.

The G DATA Q1 2015 Mobile Malware Report, summarises the most important cyber crime trends and forecasts for the current year.

This analysis carried out by G DATA security experts discovered over 440,000 new Android malware strains in the first quarter of 2015, which means that a new mobile malware strain for Android is discovered every 18 seconds. Additionally, the report has revealed that over 50 percent of Android malware has a direct financial motivation.

“The use of smartphones and tablets for online banking is increasing rapidly. With its dominant market position, the Android operating system in particular is coming to the attention of cyber criminals. Hence it is no surprise that attackers are developing and distributing financial malware such as banking Trojans especially for this platform,” says Christian Geschkat, G DATA Mobile Solutions Product Manager. “As such, we are expecting a significant increase in financially motivated malware for the Android operating system this year.”

Increase in financially motivated Android malware
Mobile banking is seeing rapid growth. This also has an effect on Android malware. G DATA security experts have determined that at least 50 percent of the malware currently being distributed has a financially motivated origin and includes banking Trojans and SMS Trojans.

Increase in mobile malware in the first quarter of 2015
G DATA security experts identified 440,267 new Android malware samples in the first quarter of 2015. The number of new Android malware instances increased by 6.4 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2014 (413,871). Compared to the first quarter of 2014 (363,153), the increase is even larger: 21 percent.