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Researchers reviewed popular apps with more than 50,000 downloads to assess their exposure to a common vulnerability, and found that 31% of them were exposed to it. Of those, 18% were in categories with potentially sensitive data, including finance, medical, communication, shopping, health, and productivity.
Additional research conducted in the second half of 2013 found a 500% increase in the number of Android apps designed to steal financial data.
"Today, mobile apps represent a significant threat vector for enterprises," said Manish Gupta, senior vice president of products at FireEye. "Worse, most enterprises have little or no information on mobile security risks nor any way to deal with an advanced attack on a mobile device. Our findings highlight the threat apps pose and why enterprises must implement a mobile security policy that focuses on applications."
The report identifies a new delivery channel for iOS malware that bypasses the Apple App Store review process. Attackers can take advantage of enterprise/ad-hoc provisioning to deliver malicious apps to end users, either through USB connections or over the air. FireEye researchers found more than 1,400 iOS apps publicly available on the Internet introducing variants of security issues, signed and distributed using enterprise provisioning profiles.
Mobile users face risks on many fronts today including…
Malicious apps that steal information once installed
Legitimate apps written insecurely by developers
Legitimate apps using insecure or aggressive ad libraries
Malware/aggressive adware that pass Google Play checks and are thus assumed 'safe' Identity theft
Premium rate phone and SMS fraud
Mobile devices are being adopted across the world as PC manufacturers see sales in PC's and laptops in decline as consumers choose simpler, lighter devices to make life easier. This evolution underscores, as Gartner recently recommended, that enterprises, "Abandon device-centric lockdown security models in favor of app-centric models."
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