Most Android Threats Would be Blocked if Phones Ran Latest Android Version, Report Says

Posted: June 27, 2013

[caption id="attachment_11405" align="alignright" width="580"]image techhive.com[/caption]If you're like most folks, when you got your Android phone, you were told that it was "safe" from threats and you didn't need anti-virus protection....yeah, right. If you were like me, one of the first things that you did was get an anti-virus app. Imagine everyone's surprise when Android devices began getting viruses and falling victim to other malicious threats. In addition to protective apps you should have, updating your Android to the latest version may play a big part in being protected.

Over three quarters of Android threats are malicious apps that send SMS messages to premium rate numbers and could be mitigated by a protection feature present in Android 4.2, according to researchers from networking vendor Juniper Networks.

However, because manufacturers and carriers fail to update Android end user devices in a timely fashion, only 4 percent of devices currently run Android 4.2, even though this version was released more than six months ago.

From March 2012 to March 2013 the number of mobile threats grew by 614 percent to reach a total of 276,259 malicious samples, researchers from Juniper Networks’ Mobile Threat Center (MTC) said in a report released Wednesday. Of those malicious applications, 92 percent target the Android operating system, they said.

Read the entire article Most Android Threats Would be Blocked if Phones Ran Latest Android Version, Report Says at TechHive.