McAfee publishes Q2 2013 threat report 

Malware designed to attack Android mobile devices has proliferated to a level not seen since early 2012. Researchers saw a marked increase in SMS-stealing banking malware, fraudulent dating and entertainment apps, weaponized legitimate apps, and malicious apps posing as useful tools. 

“The mobile cybercrime landscape is becoming more defined as cyber gangs determine which tactics are most effective and profitable,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president, McAfee Labs. “As in other mature areas of cybercrime, the profit motive of hacking bank accounts has eclipsed the technical challenges of bypassing digital trust. Tactics such as dating and entertainment app scams benefit from the lack of attention paid to such schemes, while others simply target the mobile paradigm’s most popular currency: personal user information.”

McAfee Labs also registered twice as many ransomware samples in the second quarter of this year as in the first quarter, which raised 2013’s ransomware count higher than all previous periods combined. “Ransomware” refers to a class of malware that restricts access to an operating system, and demands a ransom to be paid to its creator to remove it.{mospagebreak}In addition, researchers saw an increase in digitally signed malware. “Digitally signed malware” means that malware possesses legitimate security certificates. McAfee discovered that there were 1.2 million new samples of this type of malware, which represents a 50% increase. The report’s authors warn that illegitimate code authenticated by legitimate certificate authorities could inevitably undermine confidence in the global certificate trust infrastructure.

Spam continues to plague computer users across the globe. In April 2013, the volume of spam surpassed two trillion messages. That is the highest figure since December 2010. 

McAfee Labs researchers in over 30 countries contributed to the company’s quarterly report. They tracked real time threats, identified application vulnerabilities, analyzed and correlated risks and instantly remediated them to protect the public and enterprises. The link to the full report can be viewedhere.