Cryptomining Malware Top Security Threat to Mobile and IoT Devices - Report

Newly released findings from Allot's Telco Security Trends Report reveal that cryptomining malware is the leading security threat to mobile and IoT devices during the period from November 2017 to February 2018.

The report is based on anonymous data gathered from four CSPs across Europe and Israel, who between them, protect seven million customers. It found that, nearly two billion mobile security threats were blocked during the period – an average of two each day per mobile device.

Of those security protections:

 - Almost one billion were triggered by cryptomining malware 

 - Over one hundred million threats were triggered by adware only

 - Forty thousand threats were triggered by direct attacks in the form of ransomware and banking trojans

As part of this study, Allot set up honeypots simulating consumer IoT devices and exposed them to the Internet. Results showed immediate successful attacks, peaking at a rate of over one thousand per hour, with findings revealing that a device can get infected within 42.5 seconds of being connected to the Internet. There was also an increase of unique IP addresses attacking the honeypots over time, from 44 per day to a peak of 155 per day in less than a month of exposure.

Connected devices are forecast to grow to almost 31 billion worldwide by 2020. To help combat rising threats across this expanding mobile and IoT attack surface, the report found that CSPs are best positioned to deliver a unified, multilayer security service delivered at the network level to the mass market.

By merging value-add network-based security with built-in customer engagement capabilities, CSPs can simultaneously achieve rapid customer acquisition and high adoption rates of 40 percent, while generating incremental revenue, said Allot.