From social media abuse to mobile malware to major busts, 2011 was filled with new twists on old scams.
As was predicted last year, the security industry has tracked a rapid rise of malicious software (malware) for applications, with a trend towards targeting Google’s Android mobile phones. This malware has popped up both on unofficial marketplaces or even with “good” apps becoming infected and repurposed as bad ones. When malware is downloaded onto a phone, criminals can essentially take over that phone and gain access to any information that is shared on it from emails to text messages to bank login information, without the phone’s owner even knowing it.