Enterprise security provider Blue Coat Systems, Inc. has released its 2015 State of Mobile Malware report and if you’re in the security business, let alone and end user, it makes for some disturbing reading.

The core finding of the annual report found that mobile malware is more vicious than ever as mobile devices are becoming more deeply woven into the fabric of our personal and work lives.

Not surprising given how often we see it lately, the top trend in 2015 was the continued growth in cyber blackmail (mobile ransomware attacks) along with the stealthy insertion of spyware on devices that allow attackers to profile behavior and online habits.

Ransomware is described in the report as having grown dramatically over the last 12 months and while some varieties cause little damage beyond convincing victims to pay the cyber hostage-taker, other forms have taken on more sophisticated approaches as has previously been only the case with the Windows desktop environment.

Advanced cryptographic ransomware, such as SimpleLocker, started appearing on mobile devices in 2015, rendering music files, photographs, videos, and other document types unreadable, while at the same time demanding usually a ransom to be paid in Bitcoin before a particular time and date, with those files then becoming permanently inaccessible to the owner should the ransom not be paid.

Potentially unwanted software (adware/ spyware) continues to be a problem on mobile devices, with the researchers at Blue Coat observing that the number of junk mobile apps hosted on sites that offer this sort of software continues to increase; they further note that this type of mobile app frequently finds its way onto a mobile device through the use of deceptive advertising, or other social engineering attacks designed to trick people into installing the unwanted program without their full knowledge or informed consent.

Vectors

The rise of mobile friendly pornography has not surprisingly resulted in porn taking the top spot as the leading attack vendor for mobile malware in 2015.

Incidences of porn sites infecting mobile devices grew from 16.55 percent of all installs in 2014 to over 36 percent this year.

Conversely though, the more traditional attack vector of web advertising is no longer what it was, with attacks via ads dropping from nearly 20 percent of infections in 2014 to under five percent this year; this is said to include both malvertising attacks and sites that host Trojan horse apps designed to appeal to porn site visitors.

“As we sleep, exercise, work and shop with our mobile devices, cyber criminals are waiting to take advantage of the data these devices collect, as evidenced by the types of malware and attacks we’re seeing,” Blue Coat Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President Dr. Hugh Thompson said in a statement sent to SiliconANGLE. “The implications of this nefarious activity certainly carry over to corporate IT as organizations rapidly adopt cloud-based, mobile versions of enterprise applications, opening up another avenue for attackers.”

“A holistic and strategic approach to managing risk must extend the perimeter to mobile and cloud environments — based on a realistic, accurate look at the problem — and deploy advanced protections that can prioritize and remediate sophisticated, emerging and unknown threats,” Thompson furthered.

A full copy of the report can be downloaded here.

Image credit: siraf72/Flickr/CC by 2.0