It has been two or three months since I last blogged about Android malware. But that definitely doesn’t mean there aren’t any new threats. There are plenty! Here are two quick comparisons from the last two years: Growth of the malware problem of the platform in January 2012 compared with January 2013 is far from the ‘normal’ growth of other platforms. According to our statistics, it’s something around +850 percent! Add another year for an even more insane comparison – the growth from January 2011 to January 2013 gives us +3150 percent! The Android platform is definitely one of the most targeted malware platforms these days. But no worries, users of Avast! Free Mobile Security are safe. Read more…

What a weird positive we’ve just spotted on CNET’s Download.com…

Win32:SaliCode blocked

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Android is one of the fastest growing platforms in the world. In the second quarter of this year there were more than 300 million active Android devices. The increase is almost 900,000 of new devices per day and still rising. These days Android occupies more than 60% of the mobile devices market!  By the way there is around 300,000 newborn children a day all around the world, and this number constantly decreases.

Hand in hand with this trend goes the rise of applications and viruses for this platform. In the past week we noticed one of them that was especially tricky. At first look, it’s trying to act like a regular Google Play application, but that’s just an illusion. It is a fake application which not only downloads other fraudulent application, but it is also able to send premium text messages without user’s knowledge

After the installation it replaces the original Google Play from the menu and just waits for a first start from the user.

Immediately after the first start you are asked to update the program and there your troubles continue “Critical update, install new version, click the continue”.

After this step follows another nasty download from this link shows up:

After the installation of second aplication, your phone turns into a money sucking machine. Without your knowledge it starts sending premium messages on paid numbers. Luckily we caught this threat and Avast! detects both samples as Android:OpFake-BV.

This file is  easily accessible from more than thirty malware pages, which are made to resemble various markets and download pages! But no worries Avast! users are protected even if you accidentally visit these pages.

SHA:

8CA2E64E008BA4FC667809D4DD9FA2CE98F8AF248F1DE7B280636555EF09EF40

DCE5A75092996B4388644B1E56A0F07FCB05F4C069E14AE269075EC2A33DA3FF

Question of the Week: How do I know my avast! Antivirus is protecting me against the latest viruses?

With avast! Antivirus 7, you get each virus signature sent to you in real-time via a connection to the AVAST Virus Lab cloud, rather than needing to wait for a traditional database update. Your database will be continuously updated with the latest definitions.

To ensure this works efficiently, the auto update should be turned ON so that your virus definitions are updated automatically whenever you are connected to the internet. When you open the program’s main window, it will tell you the current security status of your computer. By clicking on “Show details” you can see the current status of the virus definitions.

If you have reason to believe that your virus definitions have not updated, you can access various features of the program by clicking on the orange avast! icon located in your computer’s system tray instead of going through the main user interface. When you right click on the avast! icon, a short menu will appear. Click Update > Engine and virus definitions to see if your virus definitions are up-to-date.

Tell your friends on Facebook about how great avast! Antivirus protection is by clicking here. You could win an iPod Touch!

The Duqu malware has raised the specter of Stuxnet II, with some in the security community claiming that this new Trojan is a reverse-engineered copy of Stuxnet – the infamous malware that may have sold more newspapers than it damaged nuclear centrifuges. Unlike Stuxnet, Duqu is designed to steal data from the targeted organization, not just destroy equipment. First noticed this summer, Duqu self-destructed after 30 days, than vanished again into cyberspace.
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I bet most of you have seen the ‘80s Back to the Future trilogy.  Back then it had great special effects, hi-tech equipment, impressive cars and tricks, but there was also a great theme in which the main hero goes back to the past…

You might be wondering how does it relate to avast! antivirus? Well all of us have a bit of nostalgia for the past, a time when we didn’t use PCs and there were no viruses.

So, the other day I asked my colleagues in our marketing/PR department: do you remember your first PC or the first virus you caught?

I was surprised what kind of discussion it has opened and how excited everyone was about it. So here we go (in alphabetical order):

Jason – Copywriter

First pseudo-computer I owned was Atari 2600 (circa 1984-5).

First real computer I ever used (at school): Commodore 64 (circa 1986-7) with a cassette-tape drive.

First real computer I actually owned was an HP desktop I bought in 1997 (with Windows 95 and McAfee antivirus (avast! engine!!)). I had it until 2002, when I upgraded to a Gateway desktop with Windows XP, which I think came with Symantec/Norton(?)… which I did not renew, instead using free antivirus software (ZoneAlarm, AVG, avast!) from then on.

Milos – Marketing Director

I was a poor kid from a poor village.  No computers.  Just socialism.  Left and right… everywhere you looked. Firsthand experience was the computer lab at school when I lived for a while in Modesto, California, in 1992/1993.   PC,  Macs and – listen carefully – Amiga.

I hated Mac because the only way to get the floppy disk out was through the software-eject button.  So when it crashed – and it was crashing all the time – your disk was in there and impossible to get out.

The PC on the other hand was excellent.  Crashed equally as often as the Mac, but there was a miracle hardware button, and when you pushed it the disk was out!  Lovely.

And of course the Amiga… I learned how to animate and draw on it.  It was THE computer for graphics!

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It’s easy to get an “older sister” bit of malware on your computer – even if you don’t want one. Just practice a little “unsafe computing” with four easy steps as outlined by AVAST Virus Lab analyst Michal Krejdl in his recent blog post. As he put it: “She’s a little bit binary, but nobody has a perfect sister, hmm?”

To pick up your own “older sister”, just do the following: Read more…

Win32:AOC aka Anvil of Crom is a small file infector written by Bumblebee. It appends own code to the last section of exe and dll files. The virus body is encrypted with more than one layer.

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