Recently, a research done by Nokia stated that Android is the worst operating system out there. The Nokia Threat Intelligence Report 2017 claimed that the main findings were worrisome. Ransomware was the largest threat in 2017, and even though security patches were available, WannaCry and NotPetya spread like wildfire through enterprise networks. Other than the desktop and network threats, Android smartphones were the worst, where even efforts from Google to secure their mobile operating system platform and Android ecosystem are being overpowered by attackers. ‘Android remains the main target for mobile malware with 68% of the occurrences,’ said the report, continuing that it is attributed to ‘the prevalence of side-loading apps from third party app stores and other sources.’ The genie is out of the bottle is China for example, where third party app stores account for 96% of the app market. Mobile adware is becoming more and more aggressive and most of it is associated to ad-funded apps from reputed app stores.
The report puts Android as the worst attacked and vulnerable mobile operating system, while credits Apple’s iOS platform to be highly secure in comparison.
‘Android devices were responsible for 68.50 per cent, Windows/PCs for 27.96 percent, with 3.54 per cent coming from iPhones and other mobile devices,’ claims the research. The 3.54 per cent figure consists of iPhone and other devices, which puts Apple’s iOS in a practically safer zone by being lower than that figure. It clearly states that iPhone users are less targeted by malware infections — thanks to Apple’s secure operating system and sandboxing of apps that does not allow the infections to spread beyond a particular point.
Android becomes highly vulnerable because of the sideloading option/feature that can be obtained with great ease, using which, Android users can download and install apps from the internet without being scanned or authenticated by Google Play Store.
