Mobile Threat Landscape: A Decade Later

snoopy · Feb 3, 2012

Mobile Threat Landscape: A Decade Later

Increasingly, threats to users are “going mobile” – and quite comfortably it seems. The mobile threat landscape has grown exponentially ever since the first proof-of-concept Palm Trojan was found. Mobile and tablet users are now seeing the same kinds of threats seen in the PC-world. Here are some scenarios that show the increasing similarities:

More than five years ago, a common tactic that cybercriminals used was getting reconfigured modems to call out to premium service and long distance numbers. Today, mobile malware frequently attempts to sign up users to premium services with regular subscription fees. Other times, they will transmit pilfered credentials and data to attackers, not caring about the user’s (limited) data plan, a potentially unsecured WiFi hotspot, or roaming with an expensive data plan.

For twenty-odd years the predominant malware threats were viruses, then it was worms and today its mostly one-time use Trojan downloaders. All this was just a means to an end; to keep your systems infected and compromised and prolong the threat. On mobile platforms, we already have data stealing Trojans tucked away in the guise of a useful mobile app but which silently record and transmit your data in the background.

Multi-staged and cross-platform threats from PC-to-mobile and back are already happening. Some variants of the ZeuS banker malware monitor your PC and online transactions; when it detects a request for secondary verification will send a Facebook link to your mobile phone to retrieve the data and thus fully get access to your online financial records.

Almost everybody I know receives some form of email on their mobile device, which basically mirrors whatever they get on your desktop. They are therefore subject to all the same phishing and spam that one gets on the PC-platform. Exploits and threats such as man-in-the-middle attacks and broken SSL connections are things one hears about on PCs. However, today’s smartphones run more than ten times faster than PCs did in the 1980s. Together with the smaller screens and lack of full fledged tools to investigate things that are running in the background, this means that mobile/tablet users will be even more unaware to the fact that they are under attack or are victims.
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Full story here: http://blog.trendmicro.com/

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