Almost every sports fan that I know has a host of different sports-centric apps on their tablets and smartphones covering everything from leagues wide news to ones that simply focus on an individual team or even player, but there are dangers lying in wait for them.
Everybody is aware that computers can get viruses and malware, annoying applets that do everything from track web sites that are visited to trying to steal passwords, address book and financial information. Now that threat is increasingly coming to mobile devices as well.
A report from antivirus detection company McAfee shows that malware for mobile devices is experiencing a tremendous upsurge and that it is primarily focused on one specific operating system, the Android platform.
The report shows that the rise in malware attacks is experiencing tremendous growth, coming from a relatively low of 792 samples in 2011 to 36,699 in 2012. Of those attacks 97% were against Google’s Android operating system.
While as far as I know no known sports apps have been the focus of a Trojan or any other attack but it is worth noting that it will only be a matter of time. Often scammers will use a tragedy to get past normally skeptical people and have them download an infected app.
The report shows that there are growing numbers of methods to gain complete control of a smartphone, and with the growing use of smartphones as banking and financial tools this could represent a great deal of danger to the average user.
Android, due to the openness of the platform, makes an obvious target for the mobile malware developer. Relatively closed platforms such as Apple’s iOS are much more secure, at least at this point in time.
