A survey of mobile malware in the wild

TLDR

Mobile malware is rapidly becoming a serious threat. The study surveys the current state of mobile malware in the wild and evaluates the effectiveness of prevention and identification techniques. The authors analyze incentives behind 46 iOS, Android, and Symbian malware samples from 2009–2011 and use the dataset to assess prevention and detection methods. They find that four malware use root exploits to launch sophisticated Android attacks, and they investigate why non‑malicious tinkerers publish root exploits and the availability of such exploits.

Abstract

Mobile malware is rapidly becoming a serious threat. In this paper, we survey the current state of mobile malware in the wild. We analyze the incentives behind 46 pieces of iOS, Android, and Symbian malware that spread in the wild from 2009 to 2011. We also use this data set to evaluate the effectiveness of techniques for preventing and identifying mobile malware. After observing that 4 pieces of malware use root exploits to mount sophisticated attacks on Android phones, we also examine the incentives that cause non-malicious smartphone tinkerers to publish root exploits and survey the availability of root exploits.