21st Century Learning and Teaching

ENISA rolls out a continuation to its most used and valued technical training material, on Mobile Threats Incident Handling and Artefact analysis

The material released is two-fold:

• The new content familiarises trainees with concepts, tools, and techniques used for incident handling on mobile devices, and offers a methodology on how to react - properly and timely - when the necessity comes.
• The new artefact analysis training material helps information security analysts to correctly analyse malware and understand its potential functionality, enabling the organisation to create proper countermeasures and mitigation plans.

Mobile malware tends to loiter in a few "bad neighborhoods" online that you should stay out of anyway.

Here are some resolutions you can easily keep, and you will be glad you did! Our 5-point checklist to help you make essential improvements to your mobile security in 2014.

There has been a veritable parade of headlines and news stories in even the mainstream consumer press about the increasing security risk presented by smartphones – a.k.a. the small yet powerful computers that most of us carry around in our pockets.

===> Trend Micro recently released data showing that there will be more than one million malware variants in the market by the end of this year.  <===

Up to now, mobile malware were certainly growing, but still minor compared to PC malware. Well, this is about to change. We have recently acknowledged a mobile malware getting in our top 10 virus activity, where usually there were only PC malware. The (sad) winner is Android/Plankton.B!tr, with a record prevalence of 4.42% (note: prevalence is the number of new hits in a given time frame divided by the number of fortigates reporting during that same interval of time).

This would currently rank it as the 6th most active virus - PC malware included. Actually, Plankton (also known as Counterclank and NewyearL) is a very intrusive form of advertisement which changes your browser’s home page, adds bookmarks, shortcuts or records your search queries. Some other AV vendors classify it as an adware, anyway, what’s for sure is that end-users won’t want it on their phones… and the fact is that it is more and more wide spread…

===> This definitely is a new milestone in mobile malware’s history. I take the opportunity to draw your attention on the mobile world. <===

Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability that could allow attackers to take full control of most Android smartphones

The vulnerability allows hackers to modify an app without breaking its cryptographic signature, according to Jeff Forristal, chief technology officer (CTO) at mobile security firm Bluebox.

Bis zu 500 Millionen Android-Smartphones sollen über einen fehlerhaft implementierten "Factory Reset" verfügen. Passwörter und Nutzerdaten seien dadurch auch nach dem Zurücksetzen des Geräts wiederherstellbar.

The number of bad bots has grown exponentially in recent years, driving poor internet performance for individuals and the loss of control over connected devices; wholesale theft of online intellectual property, content and data; unnecessarily high bandwidth fees; and compromised websites that are otherwise key to mission-critical functions. In fact, bad bots almost doubled as a percentage of all web traffic over the course of 2013, from 12.25% to 23.6%. And the number of mobile bots is up a staggering 1,000%.

Learn more:

- https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/bring-your-own-device-advantages-dangers-and-risks/

- http://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?tag=Botnet

- http://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?tag=Mobile+Security

A shake-up is coming to the mobile security industry, and it will happen when Google begins to secure its Android environment, David Duncan, CMO of Webroot, says.

When you look at most of the mobile apps, you accept the application and its privileges settings, and there is very little ability for you to customise those settings, so you either agree or disagree.

App developers are trying to monetise their apps, because remember, most of these are being sold for $1.99 or they're free, so the only way that they are going to make money is collecting and harvesting data, and selling it to a data house, who in turn is going to sell it to advertisers.

Learn more:

- http://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/often-asked-questions-are-there-cyber-security-dangers-with-apps-and-whats-about-privacy/

- http://www.scoop.it/t/apps-for-any-use-mostly-for-education-and-free

Distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack protection solutions provider Prolexic has published its Global DDOS Attack Report for the fourth quarter ...

“The prevalence of mobile devices and the widespread availability of downloadable apps that can be used for DDoS is a game changer,” explained Stuart Scholly, president of Prolexic. 

Malicious actors now carry a powerful attack tool in the palm of their hands, which requires minimal skill to use. Because it is so easy for mobile device users to opt-in to DDoS attack campaigns, we expect to see a considerable increase in the use of these attack tools in 2014,” Scholly added.

With the threat already in ads, are mobile users left vulnerable to attacks?

Though developers need to be very careful installing ad networks in their apps, users can still protect themselves by

===> making sure that the Android system setting ‘Unknown sources’ is unchecked to prevent dropped or drive-by-download app installs and installing security apps like Lookout to as their first line of defense against malware. <===

Fake antivirus, also called scareware, is a well-known Windows problem. Symantec researchers have found fake antivirus aimed at Android devices, and it's even nastier.