Alcatel-Lucent announces latest network security trends

FRANCE: Alcatel-Lucent announced the third quarter of 2013 of Kindsight Security Labs Malware Report.

Q3 2013 security highlights:
* Security threats in mobile networks were highest among Android devices, which account for 60 percent of infections.

* Forty percent of infections were attributed to Windows computers that are tethered to the mobile network.

* Infections on iPhone devices and BlackBerry devices make up less than 1 percent.

* Mobile networks in particular have seen malware infection rates grow at 20 percent in 2013

* Fixed residential malware infections have remained constant for the year around 10 percent

* Eleven percent of home networks were infected with malware, which represents a 1 percent increase from the previous quarter. Mobile device infection rates for the third quarter rose to 0.6 percent, up from 0.52 percent over the previous quarter.

Other highlights:
* In July, the home infection rate climbed to 13 percent from 10 percent in June, but then declined to 9.8 percent in September, averaging out at 11 percent for the quarter. There was no single malware infection that could be attributed to the July increase.

* 6 percent of home networks exhibited high-level threats, such as ‘bots', ‘rootkits' and ‘banking Trojans' - all types of malware infecting computers, computer programs and applications running on computers. Five percent of households were also infected with a moderate threat level malware such as spyware, browser hijackers or adware.

* While the ZeroAccess botnet continues to be the most common malware threat, the infection rate shrank from 0.8 percent to 0.5 percent, which is attributed to a partially successful take-down attempt by Symantec started in mid-July.

* Mobile malware continues to grow with a 72 percent increase in Android malware samples.

* Alcatel-Lucent's deployment of network security and analytic products within service provider networks enables it to detect and measure malicious traffic types traversing these networks such as botnets, banking trojans, identity theft attacks and other cyber-security threats.

Hackers use malware to gain access to devices for corporate espionage, spying on individuals, theft of personal information, generating massive quantities of spam, denial of service attacks on business and governments and millions in fraudulent banking and advertising scams. Device users often don't take the appropriate security precautions for their devices, and even when they do a malicious app can easily evade detection by device-based anti-virus.