malware
Android gets 97% of malware. Apple iOS 58% of enterprise.
April 14, 2013: 7:49 AM ETShould we be worried about industries that deploy malware-friendly Android devices?
Source: McAfee
FORTUNE -- As a long-time Apple (AAPL) user who doesn't spend much time worrying about viruses, trojans and other malware, I've never had a lot of confidence in the reports issued periodically by computer security companies. They always seemed to be in the protection racket, trying to scare users into buying their anti-viral software.
But a pair of recent reports got me thinking.
The first, from McAfee -- now an Intel (INTC) company -- shows an pretty astonishing rise in malware designed to attack mobile devices, from 792 samples in 2011 to 36,699 in 2012.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given its growing popularity and vaunted openness, 97% of those samples were designed to attack Google (GOOG) Android. See Mobile Malware Growth Continuing in 2013.
The second, tangentially related report comes from Citrix Systems (CTXS), which estimates the adoption rate of mobile platforms in business by tracking their enrollment in cloud services.
Given what McAfee has discovered about mobile malware, it's perhaps not surprising that some enterprises might think twice about letting their employees conduct business in the cloud with Android devices. According to Citrix, 58% of enterprises worldwide were deploying Apple mobile devices in Q4 2012, up 2 percentage points from the previous quarter. Android, at 35%, lost 2 points. Microsoft (MSFT) Windows mobile was flat at 7%.
In North America and Asia the preference for iOS was even stronger: 62% and 75%, respectively.
In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, by contrast, iOS penetration dropped (to 43% from 56%) and Android increased 11 points to 36%.
But what gave me pause was the Citrix chart (below) that showed mobile platform adoption rates by vertical industry. I can see why the user-friendly iOS platform might be preferred in environments in which mobile users engage customers one-on-one, such retail, restaurants and real estate.
But is it really a good idea to be issuing malware-friendly Android devices to field workers in utilities, healthcare and communication services? Citrix was asking the same thing. See Enterprise Mobility Cloud Report Q4 2012.
Source: Citrix. Click to enlarge.
-
Android attracts 112 times more malware than Apple's iOS
Chart of the day: Mobile threats by platform, 2012
FORTUNE -- Phil Schiller, Apple's (AAPL) ebullient senior VP for marketing, was doing his thing on Twitter Thursday, alerting his 67,866 followers that Google's (GOOG) Android platform accounted for 79% of all mobile malware in 2012.
His tweet:
@pschiller: Be safe out there: f-secure.com/static/doc/lab…
What he doesn't mention is that iOS threats, which were nonexistent in 2010 and 2011, showed up on F-Secure's radar for the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 7, 2013 12:55 PM ET -
Mac hacker attack reminds us why Steve Jobs hated Java
The programming platform Oracle inherited from Sun continues to plague Apple
FORTUNE -- "Java's not worth building in," Steve Jobs told the New York Times' John Markoff in 2007. "Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."
To Jobs' regret, Java did not disappear. The write-once-run-anywhere programming platform that Sun Microsystems developed and Oracle (ORCL) inherited continues to drag Apple (AAPL) down.
On Tuesday, with foreign hacker attacks on U.S. MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 20, 2013 6:30 AM ET -
FBI issues Android warning
Two malware attacks illustrate the dangers of a wide-open development environment
FORTUNE -- Developers often complain about the hoops Apple (AAPL) makes them jump through to get their wares into the iOS App Store. But the company has its reasons -- besides its 30% cut of the revenue -- and one of them was illustrated by the warning issued Friday by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
"The IC3 has been made aware MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 15, 2012 11:55 AM ET -
Apple's Flashback fixes: Three belts and a pair of suspenders
After a series of Java security updates, Apple quietly releases an (invisible) removal tool
In a perfect world, there would be no computer viruses, worms or trojan horses -- and for most of Mac OS X's first 10 years it was blessedly malware-free.
In the world as we would like it, Apple (AAPL) would have used that decade-long grace period to prepare for the day when its flagship operating system got hit -- as MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 14, 2012 11:41 AM ET -
Apple closes a trojan loophole after 550,000 Macs are infected
Compare to Windows, OS X is nearly malware free. But it does run JavaScript.
Having written several times -- and taken a lot of heat from PC users -- about the relative security of Apple's (AAPL) operating systems (See Why are there no Mac viruses), I feel obliged to report that Mac OS X is under what appears to be the most serious malware attack to date.
According to a report posted MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 5, 2012 8:08 AM ET -
Apple 2.0's ten most-read stories of 2011
A stock-market anomaly, a new iPhone, a second iPad, two new wireless carriers, a swarm of lawsuits and a malware false alarm
Out of the 793 items about Apple (AAPL) filed in this space over the past 12 months, these were the 10 that -- for good or ill -- interested the most readers:
Snapshot of an Apple flash crash: What triggered the sell-off that knocked $10 billion off the company's market cap? (Feb. MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 31, 2011 7:00 AM ET -
Apple's Black Friday savings by the numbers: 7% to 16%
Biggest savings on Macs. Best deals on accessories. But beware the malware.
Apple (AAPL) posted its Black Friday sale prices at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time Friday and they were exactly as rumored.
The savings on Apple-branded products range from a high of 15.94% on $69 accessories like the Magic Trackpad to 7.02% -- less than the sales tax in 25 states -- on the $299 Time Capsule 2TB.
A guide to the best deals:
WARNING: MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 25, 2011 6:30 AM ETPosted in: Apple, Black Friday, iMac, iPad, iPod touch, iTunes, MacBook, Magic Trackpad, malware, Microsoft, Time Capsule, Trojan, Windows, Worm -
Android's malware problem is growing exponentially
Reports of trojans, spyware and other malicious programs are up 472% since July
Several warnings have been issued over the past year about the growing problem of malware on Google (GOOG) Android smartphones (see here, here and here), but none as dire or as sharply worded as the report issued Wednesday by Juniper Network's Global Threat Center.
Not only did Juniper's annual threat report see a 400% increase in Android malware between 2009 and the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 17, 2011 11:16 AM ETPosted in: Android, Android Market, App Store, Apple, Google, iPhone, Juniper Network, malware, Mobile, smartphone, Spyware, Trojan -
Obsessed with Mac malware
Believe it or not, the author of Ed Bott's Microsoft Report is doing Apple a favor
It's easy for Apple (AAPL) aficionados to take umbrage at Ed Bott's recent series on ZDNet about a piece of malware called Mac Defender.
After all, Bott has made a career writing books (more than two dozen), editing magazines (PC Computing and PC World) and writing columns about Microsoft (MSFT) Windows, a family of operating systems MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 2, 2011 8:31 AM ETPosted in: Apple, Daring Fireball, Ed Bott, John Gruber, Mac OS X, MacDefender, MacGuard, MacProtector, MacSecurity, malware, PC World, PCs, YouTube, ZDNet
