The amount of malware has, according to Trend Micro, increased more in 3 years for Android, than malware did for PC’s in 14 years.
Last year, Trend Micro predicted that the amount of malware would increase to 125,000 – but in reality it increased all the way up to 350,000, says Raimund Genes, tech director at Trend Micro, in a new report “Evolved Threats in a Post-PC World” which was just released.
Now, they predict an additional 650,000 pieces of malware will surface this year.
The malware attacks on Android devices are currently not so much focused on stealing sensitive or confidential data – such attacks are still primarily targeted against PC users, but Raimund Genes also expects this behavior to change in the future.
Most malware today comes from websites and data shows that 23% of the websites are from USA.
Most-used words in social engineering attacks in the beginning of 2012 was “law enforcement”, “tax season”, “London 2012 Olympics” and “Tibet”. Second half of 2012 it was words such as “iPhone 5”, “World of Warcraft”, “Christmas” and “Thanksgiving” that the attackers used to lure people into clicking on their stuff and become infected with malware.