An increasing number of malware threats are currently affecting the Android operating system.
According to Mobile Threat Report from FSecure in Q3 2013, around 259 total mobile threat families and variants have been detected across the popular mobile OS's, with 252 of them being found on Android. The remaining 7 are found on Nokia's aging Symbian OS, while no threats have been reported for iOS, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.
The threat breakdown consists primarily of Trojans (more than 90% of all threats), the largest percentage of which are targeted at mobile banking. A large majority of mobile banking trojans are of the SMSSpy variety, which aim to intercept SMS messages sent from banks in the form of secondary or two-step authentication of user credentials or online transactions.
SMSSpy differs from other malware families as it does not descend from a single identifiable code source, and as such is more difficult to identify and intercept. F-Secure has also detected a rising count of PUAs (Potentially Unwanted Applications), which include undesirable or unwanted functionality, or inadvertently introduce security risks.
According to the source, a way for malware to find its way onto your device is by physically accessing your device, which is why locking your device or protecting it with an Anti-theft solution is recommended.
Read more: The paypers
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