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Tuesday, April 5, 2016

More Malware Attacks on the Horizon

College students love their electronic devices, but that love affair could make them prime candidates for malware attacks. Research from the IT security firm Check Point found mobile malware used against Android devices is now among the most prevalent forms of attacks for the first time, while iOS platforms could soon see a steep increase.

The firm reported that while Android attacks are still more common and will become even harder to detect, the popularity of iPhones and iPads make those devices high-quality targets for cybercriminals. Check Point said it identified more than 1,400 different malware types globally in February, with the Conficker, Sality, and Dorkbot families as the most common variants.

“On top of these risks, we’ll experience a trend of cybercriminals using advanced techniques to not only take over and control individual devices but groups of multiple devices,” David De Laine, regional managing director for Check Point, told the industry newsletter ARNnet. “Controlling one device is fun, but controlling an army of devices is a real moneymaker. Botnets are getting bigger and more well-orchestrated, giving hackers a range of malicious capabilities from massive spamming schemes and heavy DDOS attacks to cryptocurrency mining.”

A denial-of-service (DOS) attack is an attempt to make a device or network unavailable to its user. A distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) is an attack on more than one unique Internet protocol address.