Mobile security

While it certainly doesn’t hurt to ask for help from local law enforcement, know that even major cities may not have the expertise or the bandwidth to investigate compromised mobile devices. The most important objective is to take steps to make sure you’re safe. Ask for help, but do not wait for others to help you.

Granted, not all that glitters is gold, and mobiles also come with some drawbacks in terms of the protection of information. There are a number of risks that users may face when trying to secure their information on mobiles and tablets.

For a user, it can be difficult to figure out whether an app is malicious. First off it is always good only to install applications from the Google Play store, since most malware is still mainly spread through alternative stores.

In all the cases we investigated, the final payload was a mobile banking trojan. Once installed, it behaves like a typical malicious app of this kind: it may present the user with fake login forms to steal credentials or credit card details.

The infection mechanism works well – which is crucial for determining how big of a deal a piece of malware is.

DoubleLocker can change the device’s PIN, preventing victims from accessing their devices, and also encrypts the data it finds in them - a combination that has not been seen previously in the Android ecosystem.

The Android banking trojan that we first informed about in the beginning of this year has found its way to Google Play again and contains new tricks designed to get access to the private banking information of the user.

Apple has bowed to pressure from the regime in Beijing, and removed some VPN apps from the Chinese version of its iOS App Store.

ESET researchers have discovered an Android app store distributing malware on a mass scale.