You cannot find out if there’s a malicious app on your device, but here’s what you can do.
A new mobile malware called ‘Agent Smith’, which affected 15 million devices in Indiawas recently discovered by security research firm Check Point. While ‘Agent Smith’ in particular is known to show fraudulent ads for financial gains, malware on devices are also known to gain access to a user’s financial details, personal information stored on mobile devices and even listen to conversations by turning on the device’s mic remotely.
In India, most users tend to download malware through third-party app stores, a lot of downloads also happen when people click on spam links received in SMSes. Indianexpress.com spoke to Venugopal N, Director of Security Engineering at CheckPoint India about India trends, tips on how to avoid the download of malicious apps on your device and more.
Excerpts from a conversation:
How does one know if there is a malicious app on their device?
There is no way to find out if you have a malicious app on your device or not unless you have some sort of mobile security protection. More or less everybody has some sort of protection on laptop, but it is important that we put those kinds of security features on our mobile phones as well because clearly the mobile phone does not just have just your personal data but also official data.
What are the different kinds of mobile attacks?
There are different kinds of threat factors in a mobile device. For mobile, having an anti-virus does not help because it is only going to find out known malware but in the mobile world, every attack more or less is an unknown attack.
