BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb. 27
By Sadraddin Agjayev - Trend:
ESET, a Slovak internet security company that offers anti-virus and firewall products, has provided a report on the cybersecurity of mobile devices for 2019, where the issues of vulnerability of the iOS and Android operating systems, as well as the most common threats and ways to protect against them, were considered, a source in the company told Trend.
Android is the most widespread mobile OS in the world, it accounts for 76 percent of users, while iOS users account for 22 percent, according to the source.
Some 90 percent of gadgets aren’t updated to the latest version of the Android OS and it is not surprising that 99 percent of mobile malware is detected on devices with Android OS, the source added.
“Last year, the leaders in terms of the number of malicious attacks targeting Android were Russia - 15.2 percent, Iran - 14.7 percent and Ukraine - 7.5 percent,” the company said.
It was also noted that Azerbaijan is not in the top countries where the vulnerability is widespread on the basis of the Android OS, as well as on the basis of the iOS platform.
“Recently, we have discovered an active advertising campaign on Google Play promoting a program that turned out to be malicious and the number of downloads of this program reached 8 million,” the company noted. “Last year, Google took a serious step in developing cybersecurity of Android OS, creating an alliance with ESET’s laboratory on the fight against cybercrime in the Google Play market.”
“Apple’s second most popular iOS mobile platform in 2019 faced vulnerability that allowed an attacker to gain access to user files using the iMessage application (the standard Messages application),” ESET noted.
The number of detected vulnerabilities and malware for iOS devices in 2019 increased by 98 percent compared to 2018 and by 158 percent compared to 2017. At the same time, the number of new types of malware remains rather low.
Regarding detection of these vulnerabilities by country, they are mainly concentrated in countries such as China - 44 percent of vulnerabilities and the US - 11 percent of threats, India accounted for 5 percent.