Mobile network infections increase by 67%

Kindsight released a new report that reveals security threats to home and mobile networks, including a small decline in home network infections and an increase in mobile network infections.

Highlights include:

• The rate of home network infections decreased from 13 to 11 percent in Q4; 6 percent exhibited high-level threats, such as bots, rootkits and banking Trojans.
• The ZeroAccess botnet continued to be the most common malware threat, infecting 0.8 percent of broadband users.
• In mobile networks, 0.5 percent of devices exhibited high threat level malware, which increased by 67 percent from 0.3 in Q3.
• The number of Android malware samples was 5.5 times larger in Q4 than in Q3.

This report also marks the first time that Kindsight has released annual metrics from its security research. Findings from 2012 include:

• 13 percent of home networks in North America were infected with malware in 2012 with 7 percent of broadband customers, infected with high-level threats.
• Botnets were responsible for four of the top five high-level threats on home networks in 2012, including ZeroAccess, TDSS, Alureon and Flashback.
• Almost 50 percent of infected home networks had a botnet issue in 2012.

“It’s clear after publishing these metrics for a year that malware continues to be a problem for home and mobile networks,” said Kevin McNamee, security architect and director, Kindsight Security Labs. “When we look back at the full year, 13 percent of home networks were infected with malware. Botnets were responsible for almost half of those infections and ZeroAccess is still the leading botnet. Mobile malware is also an emerging threat that is clearly growing as high threat level malware on mobile networks increased by 67 percent from Q3 to Q4.”

The report also provides analysis on malware developments over the past three months, including ZeroAccess, TDSS, Alureon, AgentTK, the Zeus banking Trojan, and others. In addition, the report includes new information on the rise of mobile spyware as a BYOD threat.

The complete report is available here.