The number of news reports and the amount of speculation surrounding the increase in malware in the Android OS is always increasing but until now, a lot of it has been exaggerated and found to be untrue. However, a recent report has raised alarms and caught a lot of attention. According to popular antivirus developer Kaspersky, the second quarter of 2012 saw the malware for the Android platform increase nearly threefold and taking that as cue, the entire world is spreading the message about it. However, since only one company reported such a drastic increase, it still leaves room for questioning and in fact the figure is found to be exaggerated.
A report from The H which is a publication dedicated to security shows that, based on data from a rival of Kaspersky, malware content has not tripled but has increased only by a rather conservative amount. The difference in the figures appears to be because of a change in the methodology used by the two companies and F-Secure’s data, which is rivaling Kaspersky’s, is allegedly more sophisticated. The ultimate interpretation of this is that there is no reason to start worrying about malware attacking and taking over Android phones just yet.
According to Kaspersky almost 15,000 malicious applications were released in the last quarter that target the platform. All of these were added to the antivirus developer’s database to counter an infiltration. On the other hand, F-Secure’s data puts in the number at a mere 40. However, the difference is that Kaspersky accounts for all unique applications, which means that even a slight change, as much as shifting one letter from upper case to lower case is considered as a new malware whereas F-Secure accounts for families. In the 40 identified families, 19 are new ones and the rest were only slight variants of known malware families.
Currently, there is no immediate danger to the Android platform but both figures are worth studying in detail as it implies that the future could get worse. Perhaps it is time Google considers the possibility and includes a more sophisticated version of its code signing feature in newer versions to ensure that users’ data and phones are not affected. Android is now the most popular mobile operating system in the world having overtaken the iOS recently.
