Total Defense 2011 Threat Report: An Open Door to Malware
March 15 2012 - 1:09PM
Business Wire
Total Defense, Inc. today announced the findings of its 2011
Internet Security Threat Intelligence Report, which indicates
Android's rise in market share was only surpassed by the amount of
malware targeted at Android devices. In total, over 25 times more
Android Malware was identified in 2011.
“This past year can be viewed as the year of Android malware
with more than 9,000 escalations, clearly illustrating the
exponential growth of threats targeting this platform,” said Paul
Lipman, CEO at Total Defense. “The rise of Android malware opens up
an interesting debate about security architectures and the merits
of open versus closed systems. While users have the ability to
install any code, from anywhere, the problem is that criminals see
this as an advantage too.”
The Threat Intelligence Report identified and analyzed the most
notorious Android malware in 2011 that used social engineering
tricks to lure users:
- AndroidOS/Foncy: an SMS-Trojan
that differentiates itself from others in this category by choosing
different destination message centers based on country code.
- AndroidOS/Dogowar: a Trojan
created by malware authors socially motivated to stop animal
cruelty.
- AndroidOS/Fakeneflic.A: a Trojan
belonging to the InfoStealer category that tricks users by
disguising itself as popular software that requires login
credentials. If the user is successfully tricked, the entered
credentials will be posted to a hosted website.
- AndroidOS/WalkSteal.A: a unique
SMS-Trojan created with the intention to “teach” a lesson to the
users who are interested in using pirated applications.
- AndroidOS/FakePlayer.A: an
SMS-Trojan that uses a familiar social engineering trick of
disguising as a media player. When executed, it sends four SMS
messages to a premium number.
- AndroidOS/Golddream.A: a Trojan
that disguises itself as gaming applications where upon it monitors
and records information about incoming/outgoing calls, incoming SMS
messages in plain text files that is uploaded to a hardcoded
URL
“The malware landscape is changing at a rapid pace with
cyber-criminals producing new malware variants at an exponential
rate,” said Lipman. “The proliferation of consumer digital devices
for convenient Internet access coupled with our global
socio-economic climate continues to serve up a perfect storm for
online criminal activity. Our goal is to empower end-users with
solutions that can provide them complete protection in this
dangerous digital world.”
The report also details that the movement toward the
“App-Paradigm,” whereby PCs become more appliance-like and only
authorized applications can be installed and run, can dramatically
decrease the attack surface for digital devices. The Total Defense
Research Team suggests major platform vendors can do more –
Microsoft can lock-down Windows 8 to a greater extent on the PC by
enticing more Metro App development and Google can better secure
Android Apps by offering certified applications via their Android
Marketplace.
In addition, the report chronicles the acts of hacktivism that
have transpired over the past year, including activity by
well-known groups LulzStorm, Anonymous and LulzSec. News of
hacktivism exploits have had a snowball effect and given rise to
more politically motivated cybercrime worldwide with multiple
foreign governments and websites coming under attack from their
political enemies. In addition, the report covers specific activity
around organized crimeware, including the high-profile, successful
take-downs of the large-scale DNS-Changer, Rustock and Coreflood
Botnets, as well as the arrest of the co-founder of ChronoPay, a
Russian online payment processor, which processed the sales of
leading FakeAV. While law enforcement and cloud security controls
have put a dent in large scale Malware attacks in 2011, threats
remain extremely high.
For a full copy of the Total Defense 2011 Internet Security
Threat Intelligence Report, please visit:
http://www.totaldefense.com
ABOUT TOTAL DEFENSE,
INC.
Total Defense is a global leader in malware detection and
anti-crimeware solutions. Over 50,000 businesses across a wide
spectrum of industries have deployed the Company’s solutions,
including some of the most sophisticated buyers of security
technology worldwide, and over four million consumers worldwide use
Total Defense’s products. The Company’s solutions include
anti-malware, anti-virus, parental controls, intrusion prevention,
mobile security, online back-up and PC optimization. Total Defense
is a former business of CA Technologies, one of the largest
software companies in the world, and has operations in New York,
California, Europe and Asia.
For more information, please visit www.totaldefense.com