Monday, March 5, 2012

Poison Text Messages and Malicious Mobile Apps on the Rise

Nearly one in five mobile phone users have experienced some type of security threat with their device. That's the finding of a Cloudmark survey of 1,000 cellphone users, scheduled to be released Tuesday.

Poison text messages, nearly non-existent in the U.S. a few years ago, grew 300% in 2010 and 400% in 2011, accounting for about 1% of all text messages. "We've gone from totally clean to a trickle," says Rachel Kinoshito, head of Cloudmark's security operations. "Most people are seeing about one a month."

That foothold is part of a broader concern. Variations of scams that infest the Internet, through PC browsers, have begun spreading on a meaningful scale through mobile devices. And it looks like the bad guys are just getting warmed up. (more)