How vulnerable is your Android to viruses and cyber threats?

January 27, 2016 Android News Tip

Do you know how vulnerable your Android is?

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How often do we find our laptops and computers vulnerable to viruses and threat attacks? You might not be using your favorite gadget long before you find it being attacked by a virus if you don’t have a virus protection program on it. Sadly, your smartphone is not much different from the laptop in that regard. Let’s look into how vulnerable your Android is.

Malware in your Android?

A study funded by Google and conducted by University of Cambridge researchers found that 87 percent of Android devices are vulnerable to viruses. Who’s at fault? Unfortunately, manufacturers who don’t issue security patches regularly expose the gadgets to malware. What’s that, you might wonder.

Malware is a term used to refer to a variety of forms of intrusive software, including viruses, worms, trojan horses, and other malicious programs. It can take the form of executable code, active content, and other software.

How is your Android gadget exposed to the malware? That’s basically all about the way Android processes media files. The attackers can compromise devices by tricking users into visiting maliciously crafted Web pages. The researchers from a well known mobile security company Zimperium announced in their latest report that almost all devices that run android are a subject to various vulnerabilities, starting with version 1.0 of the OS released in 2008 to the latest 5.1.1.

Which brand issues the most protection to its devices?

The researchers from AndroidVulnerabilities took trouble to gather a particular data regarding the number of Android devices mostly exposed to various vulnerabilities by brand. In other words, we can score Android big players based on the proportion of their devices updated to the latest platform and thus free from the most crucial malware and those that still need their security patches.

The safest Android gadgets available are the Google’s Nexus ones with a score 5.5 out of 10. LG takes the second place with a score of 4.23. Motorola is graciously occupying the third place, 3.11 score. Samsung, HTC, Asus and Sony come next, all with scores of 2 plus.

If you are curious to discover more about the methodology of the research and want to keep posted, please visit the official Android Vulnerabilities website - http://androidvulnerabilities.org/