Mobile Threats Delivered by Adult Content Double

Threat actors hiding malware in adult content are targeting mobile users over those who turn to their PCs to get turned on. 

Research published by Kaspersky found that while PC threats masquerading as pornography fell by 40% in 2019, attacks on mobile users increased. 

Kaspersky's review of 2019 threat activity discovered that the number of mobile users attacked by threats disguised as pornographic content grew two-fold in 2019, reaching 42,973 users, compared to the 19,699 targeted in 2018.

By contrast, the number of PC users affected by malicious adult content fell from 135,780 users attacked in 2018 to 106,928 in 2019. 

To further their understanding of the attacks waged against mobile users, researchers checked all files disguised as pornographic videos or adult content–related installation packages for Android and ran 200 popular porn category tags against this database. 

"The analysis showed results for 105 tags in 2018 and for 99 tags in 2019, demonstrating that not all porn is used by cybercriminals to target their victims," wrote researchers.

Additional analysis demonstrated that pornographic content that could be rated as violent was rarely ever used by threat actors for spreading malware.

Advertising software that shows users unwanted content or redirects them to unwanted advertising pages was the most prominent mobile threat both in variety and in the number of attacked users. Out of the top 10 porn-related threats for mobile users in 2019, seven belonged to this class of threat.

An advertisement application detected as AdWare.AndroidOS.Agent.f hit 35.18% of mobile us ..

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