Google’s Android Operating System is the most used mobile OS in the world. While its presence on smartphone and tablet devices continues to rise, so does its reputation as being susceptible to malware and malicious attacks.
A recent report by Kaspersky Labs has just revealed that while Gingerbread 2.3 is now fairly dated, it remains the foremost target to malware, with 28% of all blocked malware attempts in the third quarter of 2012 originating from version 2.3.6.
Android’s fragmented nature leads to many users running devices on outdated version of the OS. 50% of users are still running Gingerbread on their devices, despite its advanced age. The majority of users are running on one and two year old firmware.
The vast quantity of attecks reported by Kaspersky were Java exploits, with more than half of all malicious attacks attempting to send premium SMS messages in order to steal money from the owner of the infected device. Often, the malware has the ability to send hundreds of messages in a very short amount of time.
There are some bright spots for Android in Kaspersky’s report, as the total number of malware attacks dropped significantly in the 3rd quarter of this year. The number of attacks had dropped to 9,100 by the end of Q3, down considerably from the 15,000 attacks in Q2. Prior to that drop, malware had increased three consecutive quarters.
The report does only consider blocked malware attacks, so much still remains to be done before Android users can sleep as soundly as iOS users do.
So, as Jim Dalrymple wrote in response to this report, “Be safe Android people.”
