Attacking moving targets

Mal­ware on com­put­ers has been around for years, but cy­ber­crim­i­nals have begun tar­get­ing mo­bile phones. In fact, today's phones are re­ally just pocket com­put­ers on which is stored a good part of our lives, in­clud­ing sen­si­tive per­sonal data. As a re­sult, se­cu­rity com­pa­nies in­creas­ingly offer so­lu­tions to pro­tect the data on our phones from at­tack: “How­ever, users are not aware enough,” says Josep Al­bors, a lab­o­ra­tory head at Eset, a multi­na­tional leader in in­ter­net and soft­ware se­cu­rity.

“Each year, the amount of mal­ware tar­geted at An­droid in­creases ex­po­nen­tially. Last year, in our lab­o­ra­to­ries, we iden­ti­fied mil­lions of unique ex­am­ples,” adds the se­cu­rity ex­pert.

An­other in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity com­pany, GData, es­ti­mates that 4,500 new se­cu­rity threats against An­droid ap­pear daily. The num­ber seems in­flated, but it is small com­pared with the vol­ume of threats against PCs.

“What we are see­ing is threats are con­stantly mod­i­fied, which makes it im­por­tant to use max­i­mum pro­tec­tion, as the at­tacks come from many places, whether through Blue­tooth, clas­sic email or a What­sapp mes­sage. Apart from the typ­i­cal viruses that sub­scribe you to pay ser­vices with­out you know­ing it, at Eset we dis­cov­ered one for An­droid that dis­abled the de­vice, kid­nap­ping the in­for­ma­tion, en­crypt­ing it with a pass­word and then de­mand­ing a ran­som to re­lease the data,” says Al­bors.

This shows how the ma­jor­ity of at­tacks against mo­biles are tar­geted at Google's mo­bile op­er­at­ing sys­tem: “An­droid is the plat­form that is at­tacked the most, but that does not mean it is the most vul­ner­a­ble. There are at­tacks against all the op­er­at­ing sys­tems: Win­dows, IOS, Mac, Linux. Is An­droid eas­ier to at­tack than the oth­ers? Not nec­es­sar­ily, but as it is the most pop­u­lar op­er­at­ing sys­tem, it is a juicy tar­get for at­tack­ers. And now that it is also used in TVs and other de­vices, it is even more true,” says Al­bors, who adds: “If we com­pare it with the sit­u­a­tion in the do­mes­tic PC mar­ket, Win­dows has 90% of the mar­ket share, mean­ing that is where hack­ers will go be­cause they know it will give them the max­i­mum re­turn on their in­vest­ment. Some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pens with An­droid. In Spain, for ex­am­ple, it ac­counts for 85% of mo­bile sales.”

What is also true is that some app stores apply more con­trols and re­stric­tions than oth­ers when ac­cept­ing soft­ware. In this sense, Apple is top: “When you use an IOS app, you know it is in a con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment, some­thing not al­ways the case with An­droid. One app could in­ter­fere with oth­ers and steal pri­vate data, such as user ac­counts or pass­words,” says the ex­pert.

As a re­sult, one of the most im­por­tant things is to know what we are down­load­ing, to do so from se­cure places and to care­fully read the app re­quests: “We know that an app can never be 100% se­cure, but an app taken from Google Play will al­ways be more trust­wor­thy than one taken from an al­ter­na­tive mar­ket in China, which offer pay apps for free,” says Al­bors.

Eset has labs all over the world and Albor's is in On­tinyent, analysing ex­am­ple at­tacks pro­vided by clients: “An ex­cel­lent prod­uct is not enough,” he says. “We also need to make cus­tomers aware that they need to be re­spon­si­ble and not click strange links or down­load sus­pi­cious at­tach­ments. It is like a house: no mat­ter how many alarms you have, you still lock the door.”

Most of Eset's ef­forts are di­rected at threats to PCs, be­cause the vol­ume of at­tacks in this area is so much higher than those against mo­biles. How­ever, the com­pany knows that in the fu­ture it may have to deal with a whole host of prod­ucts, from tele­vi­sions to cars: “Al­most every­thing can al­ready be con­nected to the In­ter­net. At home, we are start­ing to see tele­vi­sions with on­line ac­cess, for ex­am­ple. What we must keep clear is that if we want to use on­line bank­ing ser­vices, it is bet­ter to do so from a pro­tected de­vice, such as a com­puter, rather than a tele­vi­sion, which is set up for au­dio­vi­sual ma­te­r­ial,” says Al­bors.

An­other prob­lem se­cu­rity ex­perts have to deal with is ob­so­les­cence: “There are de­vices or op­er­at­ing sys­tems for which there is no longer any tech­ni­cal sup­port be­cause they are con­sid­ered old, but there might still be mil­lions of users using them. We also have to avoid threats in these cases,” says Al­bors.

What is clear is that what mo­ti­vates hack­ers is get­ting max­i­mum profit from at­tacks: “The main ob­jec­tive of a cy­ber­crim­i­nal is mon­etis­ing their threats. And if it is not an at­trac­tive eco­nomic propo­si­tion, then they are not in­ter­ested. Threats are bound up with the mass use of de­vices. Be­fore, when all of this began, hack­ing had a ro­man­tic or cre­ative side. Today, all they are look­ing for is money and anonymity,” he says.

Com­pe­ti­tion be­tween hack­ers and se­cu­rity firms is set to con­tinue: “As long as the in­ter­ested par­ties can make a profit, this will not end,” con­cludes Al­bors.

The small town of Passa [www.​passa.​fr] in the Pyrénées-Ori­en­tales de­part­ment in south­ern France has been in the news in re­cent months after the mayor, Patrick Bel­le­garde, ded­i­cated a new av­enue in the town to the leg­endary US gui­tarist, Jimi Hen­drix (1942-1970). At the be­gin­ning of July, to co­in­cide with the long-es­tab­lished sum­mer fes­ti­val, Jazzèbre [www.​jazzebre.​com/​la-​saison/​jazzapassa], the av­enue was of­fi­cially in­au­gu­rated in the pres­ence of the idol's younger sis­ter, Janie Hen­drix, who is in charge of the com­pany, Jimi Hen­drix Ex­pe­ri­ence [www.​exp​erie​nceh​endr​ixto​ur.​com].

A big Hen­drix fan, Bel­le­garde had the idea of call­ing a street after his hero in a newly-built res­i­den­tial area. In the same area, which is home to lit­tle over 800 in­hab­i­tants, there are now plans to chris­ten the rest of the streets with the names of mu­si­cians, such as Jordi Barre [ca.​wikipedia.​org/​wiki/​Jordi_​Barre], Lluís Llach [www.​lluisllach.​cat] and Pas­cal Come­lade [www.​pascal-​comelade.​fr], who took part in the av­enue's nam­ing event.

In an in­ter­view with the radio sta­tion, France Bleu Rous­sil­lon, Bel­le­garde said [goo.​gl/​GY1BR7] he made the de­ci­sion “in order to step a lit­tle out­side nor­mal­ity and be­cause it will be good for Passa”: “Canigó is just in the back­ground, it is fab­u­lous! It is a holy moun­tain and a sym­bol of Cata­lan iden­tity. As­so­ci­at­ing some­one who was like a fleet­ing mu­si­cal star with this land­scape is a good thing,” he said. In the same in­ter­view, the mayor also said that the new street would have no num­ber 27, that age at which Hen­drix [www.​jimihendrix.​com] died in 1970.