Android Smartphones Under Attack

Strategic Analytics released a report last August that highlights details on the growing popularity of Android smartphones. According to SA’s research, in 2012 152.1 million Android smartphones were exported to all around the world, while 80.6 units were distributed globally in 2011. Android has now 70 percent of the share of the global smartphone market, while it had 51 percent a year ago. Neil Mawston, executive director of SA, stated: "Android is clearly the undisputed volume leader of the smartphone industry at the present time".

Alarmingly, it seems that Google’s popular smartphone is also highly popular among the individuals who create malicious software. The company F-Secured published a report last March about how Android’s security has been compromised. The report says that 79 percent of all mobile malware in 2012 had Android as target.   

F-secured counted 149 threats. 95 of them were alterations of different families of threats while 54 were new families of threats plus different variants.  

The mobile threats found can be divided in six different types: three Malware Softwares (Backdoor, Trojan and Worm) and three POA (potentially unwanted application). A Backdoor allows a person to access our mobile without authorization remotely; a Trojan is a program intended to perform damaging actions like stealing data or interfering with our control of the devise; a Worm is a program that duplicates itself; Spyware is a software that gathers information about what the user does on the computer, like the pages visited on the internet, while Trackware collects information that can be used to identify the user; Finally, Adware is a program that shows advertisements and can keep track of the user’s behavior as well. 

As per a post recently published on APKpalace, transferring files from one phone to another using Bluetooth is one of the most commonly known mediums of malware transfer, and that's why they recommended an app to transfer files instead of using Bluetooth alone.

But F-secured is not the only company that has pointed out the Android security weaknesses. Bluebox Security (a mobile security firm from San Francisco) determined last July that 99 percent of Android devices are vulnerable to attacks consisting in modifying Android applications packages to turn them into Trojan programs, without breaking their cryptographic signatures.

This weakness can also be used to obtain complete access to the system. "You can update system components if the update has the same signature as the platform", Bluebox’s Chief Technology Officer, Jeff Forristal, stated. “The malicious code would then gain access to everything… all applications, data, accounts, passwords and networks”. So, the Android users must be familiar with some of the most interesting and useful Android tweaks that could help them keep their phone as safe as possible.

Hackers have several ways to distribute those Trojan applications. They send them via e-mail, upload them to any app store, host them on whichever website they choose or copy them to the attacked mobiles via USB. Nevertheless, Forristal explained that it is not possible to use Google Play to distribute the malicious software, since Google updated the app store’s application entry process in order to block compromised applications, but someone may trick an user to manually install a malicious update for an application first installed through Google Play.

Bluebox stated that the Android security flaw exists since Android 1.6 (code name Donut), which means that the vulnerability affects every smartphone Android has released for the past four years.