According to the newly disclosed report, cybercriminals are using mobile devices to avoid detection and execution of a series of malicious acts. Distil Networks, a security company that specialises in botnets recently issued an announcement that about 5.8% of the six major cellular operators used for activities such as automatic attacks, which is equivalent to 1 out of every 17 devices. Attacked by malicious hijackers. And the resulting zombie machine traffic accounts for 8% of the total traffic.
This poor robotic traffic is primarily targeted at Web-deployed companies and cover a wide range of behaviour including network sniffing, brute-force attacks, competitive data mining, online fraud, account hijacking, data theft, spam, and digital advertising fraud. Distil Networks sampled over one million devices and found that each device received an average of 50 zombie robot attacks per day.
Rami Essaid, co-founder and chief product and strategy officer of Distil Networks, said: “Mobile is a new trend in zombie machine attacks. It can also perform advanced attacks while remaining under cover. Some of these attacks infected via email downloads. Embedded into a legitimate APP, millions of mobile device users unknowingly carry malicious programs, allowing cybercriminals to perform robot botnet attacks, abuses, and fraud, among others.”
Source, Image: distilnetworks
