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.
