Almost 10% of Android apps are malware: report
Thinking of switching form iPhone to Android? You might want to think again.
It seems that as many as nine per cent of Android apps – that’s almost one in every 10 – are fully or partially malware, according to new research.
The figure comes from Cheetah Mobile’s security report for the first half of 2014.
Cheetah collected 24.4 million sample files, and of those, 2.2 million turned out to be viruses.
“The collection of 2.2 million virus samples constitutes an increase of 20.5 times over 2012’s numbers and an increase of 2.5 times over the total from 2013,” the company said.
It said that Asia and parts of Western Europe had the highest rates of infection in the past six months.
“This is due in part to the prevalence of third party app stores in these regions, which have very lax checks to ensure that applications do not contain viruses. Malware, the primary vector for the spread of viruses, is often rife on these sites.
“In contrast, infection rates in the United States, Australia and most other parts of Europe are low.”
Cheetah also said that mobile payment viruses were set to become the primary threat to Android hardware this year – they were two-thirds of the malware the company detected.
