The Rise in Android Malware

Jim Dalrymple:

Android is definitely winning… the race for the most malware, that is.

According to a new study from the Juniper Global Threat Center, malware on Android rose an incredible 472% since July 2011. That’s only a few months.

Let me take the devil’s advocate position here. Of course Android has more malware than iOS. For the same reason that Mac OS X has more malware than iOS: they’re open to unsigned, un-reviewed apps from anywhere. The question should not be whether malware for Android exists, but whether it’s a real problem for typical Android users. If you shop for and install apps only from, say, Google’s own Android Market and Amazon’s Appstore, how likely are you to encounter it? If you went out and examined 1000 Android phones in the real world, how many of them would have some sort of malware on them? Those are the questions that matter, and this report doesn’t answer them.

★ Thursday, 17 November 2011