Is Android the Most Insecure OS ?

Finnish security company F-Secure said in a report that the free Google operating system Android not only has the largest OS market share in the global smartphone sales, but also the largest platform to account for 79 per cent of all malware infections on smartphones.

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As much as 79% of all the malware has been targeted towards Android. Their platform is also the most fragmented among’st others, hence difficult to manage all the vulnerabilities.

The F-Secure quarterly report said:

“Every quarter, malware authors bring forth new threat families and variants to lure more victims and to update on the existing ones,”

“In the fourth quarter alone, 96 new families and variants of Android threats were discovered, which almost doubles the number recorded in the previous quarter.”

The closest competitor in this malware race is Symbian OS from Nokia, with 19%. Since Nokia already moved its entire product portfolio to Microsoft Windows Phone, i guess it was not a concern for Nokia.Speaking of which, other major platforms like Blackberry, Apple iOS, WP7 & WP8 have less than 1% vulnerabilities. So looks like closed OS platforms are after all good in terms of security.

Some examples of what these malwares do are:

Shady SMS-sending practices
Banking trojans, designed to steal passwords for online accounts and transfer money from the victims’ accounts.

among’st others.

So next time you buy an Android, do not forget to install an Antivirus (F-Secure?).

You can get the whole report here.

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