If You Have an Android Phone You Should Pay Attention to This

The co-founder of a Russian anti-virus software company says 99 percent of mobile attacks are aimed at Android-based phones.

Speaking Monday at the Reuters Global Media and Technology Summit in London, Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive officer of Kaspersky Lab, said the mobile devices that use Android operating systems are more vulnerable, since Apple has strict controls and does not allow third-party applications, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Android phones are more prone to attack, said Eugene Kaspersky, of Kaspersky Lab, an anti-virus software maker.  (Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press).

Banking applications are most vulnerable to cyber crime, Kaspersky said.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Kaspersky said the most disturbing trend in cyber attacks was a growing shift to mobile devices from computers and a major cyber attack using mobile phones was bound to happen since cellular users are not properly protected.

"Cyber crime is moving to mobile but people are not aware. It's still not as big as computer crime but it's growing fast. The trend is a very dangerous situation," Kaspersky said, noting that it took the Chernobyl virus in 1998 for people to properly protect their computers. "I expect something really bad to happen to change people's minds and awareness."

Sonatype CEO Wayne Jackson and New Enterprise Association General Partner Harry Weller shared similar sentiments in a Fox Business interview, which detailed more than 718,000 malicious Android apps have been discovered, up to June 2013.

Such hacking concerns, reports Apple Insider, recently led KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo to predict Samsung needs a fingerprint verification system to keep up with the market's rush toward on-board biometrics. The iPhone 5s sparked a trend by introducing a simple, effective and reliable solution with Touch ID.

By leveraging the popularity of the iPhone brand, Apple Insider claims, Touch ID is now in the hands of millions of consumers, leaving other manufacturers scrambling to get out similar products.

"Fingerprint is necessary for a star model," Kuo writes in his report. "Because Apple's iPhone 5S and HTC's One Max have fingerprint, S5 the star model can't lack the function even [if] the solution (area type same as iPhone 5S's provided by Validity) is not as mature as iPhone 5S's."

Kaspersky Lab makes one of the top-selling anti-virus programs in the United States, and is the world’s largest privately held vendor of endpoint protection solutions, currently operating in almost 200 countries and territories across the globe, according to their Web site.

(H/T: Chicago Tribune)

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