McAfee: Hackers are increasingly targeting Android devices

Cybercriminals are targeting everything from social networking sites to desktop computers, mobile devices, and in some rare cases, medical equipment.

But more and more Android WINS focus in the hacker's eyes.

According to the latest McAfee threats report [PDF], covering the first quarter of 2013, developed the malware at Google mobile platform grew by more than 30 percent in the first three months of the year. Mobile attacks were on track to surpass the 2012 's total figures.

Total mobile malware samples in the database (image: McAfee)

According to antivirus company, mobile malware even spread to booming economies such as South Korea and smartphone India, the latter where there will be approximately 67 million smartphone subscribers in the country at the end of this year. This represents approximately 6% of the total Indian population.

Overall, there are just shy of 51,000 new attacks in McAfee's database mobile malware samples for the first month. But this is down slightly from the last three months in 2012. This compares with only 792 samples in all 2011.

Android takes the largest chunk of mobile malware by platform pie. Symbian was the next with low single-digit percentage, followed by Java, which is now almost non-existent. Other platforms, such as Blackberry, iOS, doesn't even register.

New Android malware (image: McAfee)

McAfee said the threats of Android-based mobile commercial spyware and adware was reduced, with many spyware and targeted attacks are becoming more prominent. The rise of botnets is also clear, the company warns, reiterating comments made earlier this year when it warned that the more developed countries and regions become a hotbed of activity.

Talk about targeted Trojans, the report reads: "as recently as late last year, it was possible to say that the majority of mobile attacks were located in Russia and China. This quarter, but we have seen criminals expand their operations to other parts of the world. "

Many seem to be directly targeted activists, McAfee warns.

Also in the report still computers the most directional vector for hackers and attacks. McAfee reports a total of 128 million samples on its database.

Social networks are also being targeted, such as Facebook and Twitter, to trick friends and acquaintances to install malicious code. McAfee reported a "significant" spike in Koobface work during the first quarter.

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Toshiba Launches three 10.1-inch Android tablets

Toshiba has added three 10.1-inch Android tablets to its Excite lineup, priced from $ 299 to $ 599.

First is inflammatory.

According to CNET, the Tablet is equipped with industry standard 1280 x 800 resolution and is powered by the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. The Tablet has a 1.2 MP front camera but oddly has no rear camera. The tablet running on Google's Android OS 4.2.2 and has 16 GB of storage space. Storage on tablet can also be expanded through a microSD slot, the Tablet also offers connectivity via Micro-HDMI and Micro-USB. Toshiba Excite clean is priced to 16,876 rupees (US $ 299).

Excite clean (Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)

The second painting is inflammatory Pro.

This is priced at 28,164 rupees (US $ 499). What separates this tablet from Excite pure is that NVIDIA's new Tegra 2 processor and Google Android Jellybean OS. The resolution is also increased at 2560 x 1600 resolution. The cameras are also a far improvement from inflammatory pure, inflammatory Pro has a 1.3 MP front camera and 8 .3MP rear camera. It comes in a 32 GB storage variation and sports dual Harman Kardon speakers. Just as inflammatory clean has inflammatory Pro also Micro-HDMI, Micro-USB and microSD ports.

Excite Pro. (Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)

Finally, the third new Tablet introduced by Toshiba Excite write.

Priced at 33,808 rupees (US $ 599). As the name suggests, allows this tablet user to write with a Wacom digitizer that comes with the tablet. Excite Pro and excite writing is basically the same tablet, with almost identical specifications and designs. Excite says is in direct competition against Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1. Samsung Galaxy note series has software that supports S-Pen functions, while the Toshiba Excite write not. The Tablet is currently just an app to make full use of the stylus, which is Toshiba's own notes app TruNote. Toshiba writing has, moreover, not a place to hold the pen tablet like the Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 does.

Excite sign. (Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)

Personally, if I had to choose between the three, I'd go with excite Pro simply because the price specifications is amazing. I've never been a real fan of the type of devices or using the pen and, although the price gap between excite and excite Pro write is simply for additional writing capacity, again, this is something I can live without right now.

What is also appealing to me, besides being sold at the Toshiba name, is the addition of Harman Kardon speakers. Does anyone know their music will again Harman Kardon as one of the best in the business and it's great to see their products in mobile devices.

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Windows Phone climbing in the United Kingdom, but cheap androids reign in Spain and Italy

Windows Phone market share continues to inch up in the UK, but sub-150 € androids reign in Spain and Italy.

According to research by Kantar Worldpanel grown Windows Phone share of the smartphone market in the three months to April from four percent a year ago to 8.4 per cent, likely led by sales of Nokia devices.

Nokia's Fellow third-place contender Blackberry meanwhile has seen its shares tumble, from 13.6 percent last year to 5.6 percent of the smartphone market during the latest quarter.

Android still dominates in UK with 56.9 percent of sales, up 4.2 percentage points compared with the corresponding period of last year. It is followed by the iOS with 28.7 percent, down by 1.6 points every year.

The edges are 177,000 interviews with consumers in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain for their most recent report, which found the large Windows Phone share over five is now 6.7 percent, up three percentage points each year, while Blackberry is now 2.5 percent, down 4.3 percentage points.

All five countries, iOS for 18.4 per cent of sales, down 1.8 percentage points on the year – iOS has seen a year-on-year decline in the share of iOS in all markets except France, where it grew 1.2 percent points each year to 20.1 per cent — while Android at 69.6 per cent were up 9.5 percentage points.

The different States of each country's economy seems to shape the smartphone sales in Europe, according to Kantar's global insight Director Dominic Sunnebo, noting that Samsung Galaxy S3 accounted for only 4.7 percent of sales in Spain compared with 23.5% in Germany during the three-month period.

"Increase the desire for phones that cost under € 150 in Spain and Italy has helped Sony and LG to push serious percentage gains. In Spain, Sony has 19 percent and LG is up to 17 percent from just three percent in the previous year, "Sunnebo wrote, pointing to the vendor entry level units, Sony Xperia you and LG Optimus L3 and L5 models.

Androids accounted for 92.8 per cent of sales in Spain and 66.7 percent in Italy, up 11.7 and 11.7 percentage points respectively each year.

Sunnebo told ZDNet that Nokia to deal with cash-strapped Spain and, above all, Italy – where its share of sales is 10.5 percent — by discounted older products such as Lumia 800 and 610. Meanwhile, Nokia's UK sales leads with 620 and 820.

According to Kantar, has Windows Phone share of turnover also increased in the United States, which accounted for 5.6 percent of sales, up from 3.8 percent a year ago, largely driven by Nokia's Lumia devices. Nokia recently said it expected to ship more than seven million Lumia phones worldwide in the second quarter of this year.

Android still dominates in the United States, grows each year from 50.3 percent to 51.7 percent, while iOS rose 2.3 percentage points to 41.4 percent. BlackBerry sales for the three months to April, accounted for only 0.7 percent, according to Kantar.

Windows 8 fortsätter att misslyckas

The real take-away from Net applications may 2013 version of NetMarketShare monthly operating system statistics is that PC sales continue to plummet, Microsoft's Windows 8 may be a factor behind the plunge.

Windows 8 is falling further behind Vista at similar points in their life cycle. Number at the bottom reflecting PC market share. (Data from NetMarketShare)

While Microsoft apologists focuses on Windows continues to be the dominant operating system, they keep missing the two elephants in the room: Windows 8 continues to fall behind Microsoft's former top operating system error, Vista, and Windows is no longer the dominant operating system when the end user be considered computers, smartphones and tablets.

True, on the desktop, Windows 7 still ranks as top operating system with 44.85-percent of all PC users, followed by the still popular Windows XP with 37.74 percent. Vista — Yes it never loved Vista – comes in at third with 4.51 percent. Despite that finding, and buying Windows 7 computers have become ever more expensive and difficult, just try to find one in a store, Windows 8 share is growing but still comes in last at 4.27 percent.

Worse still, Windows 8 month of growth lagging further and further behind Vista's terrible 2007 adoption numbers. When you compare operating system when they first launched, dragged Windows 8 adoption rate in its first month Vista at just over half-a-percent among PC buyers. Now, in her 8th month out, Vista market share numbers now lead Windows 8 with 3.64 percent. Of course, both lags far behind XP and Windows 7 numbers at similar points in their product life cycle.

I suspect it will only get worse for Windows 5.0 (blue). Windows 8, promises to fix some of the users ' concerns about Windows 8. But resolve enough of them?

For example, if all of the reborn start button does is give you a different way in the interface Metro unpopular, will Windows XP and Windows 7 users really care? No matter how good Windows 5.0 turns out to be, it seems likely that the companies will wait to buy any version of Windows 8 until blue in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Some would argue that because NetMarketShare changes how they measure browser and operating system market share from time to time based on changes in the Central Intelligence (CIA) Population data that you don't just compare NetMarketShare data from year to year, particularly as early as 2007.

You could argue, as NetMarketShare rival StatCounter, that "weighting statistics means that statistics are only as good as the weighing method. If the weighting information is incorrect or out of date, then make data totally incorrect. " Furthermore, StatCounter finds Netmarketshare's CIA-based data massasging be "vague and incoherent."

So why use NetMarketShare data at all? Because, for better or worse, it is the most common measure of operating system and browser share. Thus, to the best available information, I'm trying to compare, if not identical apple to apple varieties as Red Delicious apples Granny Smith. While you can't expect to be completely accurate, the figures show significant trends.

In larger retail market, as Mary Meeker, the well-regarded analyst and venture capitalist, pointed out in her 2013 Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers ' 2013 & Internet trends report, Windows is in decline regardless of how to measure it. Apple iOS and Android now has the lion's share of computing devices, including computers, smartphones and tablets, with a 65% share of Windows 35%. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu Linux founder, was on to something when he declared that the Ubuntu Linux first error, that "Microsoft has a majority market" was now closed.

Modern versions of Windows is non-player on tablets and smartphones. (Credit: NetMarketShare)

Netmarketshares mobile operating system statistics showing Apple iOS keeps the lead with a strong 59.49 percent, followed by Android with 24.4 percent. Java ME, take with 10.2 percent and Symbian with 2.06-percent, which is not even smartphone operating system up the back.  During these we find the once mighty BlackBerry OS, with just 2.06 percent, and combined all versions of Windows Phone with a 1.21-percent.

Microsoft's mobile operating system share is actually worse than it seems. None of its latest smartphone/Tablet OS, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 or RT. break even mark 0.01% on Netmarketshares mobile/tablet operating system market share chart. How bad it is? Android 1.6, with 0.01 percent, make the chart.

Some would argue that comparing mobile and desktop operating systems are like comparing apples and oranges. A more apt comparison is horses and cars. Both give you transport. Experts say computers and their operating systems are on the way out. Microsoft, a maker of buggy-whip might disagree with this analogy.

Windows will no longer matter? Of course not. Some users always need computers and most of them will stick with Windows. The question for Microsoft today is "will someone want to Windows 8?"

Related Stories:

Best Android smartphones (June 2013 edition)

I looked at a couple of his books, not impressed.

I will use his book Javascript 1.5 by example as an example of his lack of attention to detail.

Chapter 3, "JavaScript in action", consists of describing objects, methods and properties and 3 examples of methods, alert(), confirm() and prompt (). Yes it is all over.

His definitions of
item is: simply put, an object is a thing, something. Just as things in the real world are objects (cars, dogs, dollar bills and so on), are considered things in the computer world as objects, too.

[2 lame paragraphs jumped]

Practices are things like object can do. In the real world have object methods. Cars move, dogs bark, dollar buying and so on. Alert () is a method of the window object, so the object can warn the user with a message box ...[useless additional paragraph]

Features: all items have properties. Cars have wheels and the dogs have fur. Things that the browser has Javascript, name, and version.

His methods example code:

=== END of CHAPTER 3 ===

My review.

"Simply an object is a thing, something." leaves the reader with nothing. An object not declared. If you don't know what an item is, you would now be able to answer the question, what is an object?

He did not explain what a method is, especially his "real world" approach such as "dollar buying". I think people do not buy dollars. If I had to explain the dollar as one object: the dollar has no methods and properties: dollars. value, dollar. $ date, serialNumber.

It his sample code??? This is terrible. Blind leading the blind.

Message for example, alert(), confirm() and prompt () is exactly the same except the passed value [text phrase].

Alert is OK

confirm and prompt is used to retrieve user input.

confirm, user clicks from a selection of buttons.

quick pick what the user types in the shortcut text field.

What is missing is the setting of a variable value. Confirm() and prompt () is never stand alone. There is always a variable assignment.

each choice = confirm ("which do you choose?");

var name = prompt ("What is your name?", "Please enter your name here.");

==================

In his technical blog that he claims often inaccurate "facts" or Miss detail.

Recent examples:
[Silvermont] provides three times more performance for five times less power than the current generation Atom nucleus.

This is how I say it correctly: it is expected that an Atom is running at maximum clock speed will exceed Z2560 by about 300%.

An Atom that runs at a lower clock rate, makes a performance level equal to Z2560, will use 500% less power.

What Adrian Kingsley-Hughes said 3 X performance and 5 X less power and there should be a or 3 X performance or 5 X less power.

In the post similar to this one "best Android tablets"

When listing the processor of the tablets had some processors is stated as:

1.4 GHz Exynos quad core processor
NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor
Dual-Core Processor ARM Cortex A15

My take on the detail. When you compare these tablets processors equal cannot be compared with the above lack of detail. This is SoC chips, which have a GPU as well.

Dual-Core Processor ARM Cortex A15 should:
Samsung Exynos 5250, dual-core 1.70 GHz Cortex A15 CPU and a quad-core Mali GPU T604

NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor should:
NVIDIA Tegra 3, a 1.3 GHz Cortex-A9 quad-core processor
and a twelve-core 416 MHz Nvidia GeForce ULP GPUS

1.4 GHz Exynos quad core processor should:
Samsung Exynos 4412, 1.4 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 and Mali-400MP GPU

I also would have included benchmarks.

The devil is in the details.

Google's app store downloads could surpass Apple's June

Summary: Major Android user base will help Google Play likely to unseat the App Store as the largest source of mobile app downloads in the world.

900 Million Army of Android devices that have been enabled to date is likely to push Google Play in pole position among mobile app stores in June.

Google and Apple in may recently announced almost in unison they had reached important milestones for downloads from their respective stores.

Google announced in may it had reached 48 billion downloads on the back of a month which saw the Android users download about 1.5 billion apps. Google had about 700,000 apps available in June, according to the App brain.

The day before, Apple announced iOS owners since opening its App Store in 2008, had downloaded 50 billions of apps – excluding re-downloads and updates – and did so at a rate of two billion apps per month. Apple has about 850,000 iPhone apps and 350,000 iPad apps available.

Horace Dediu, Asymco, mobile analyst at researcher forecasts that Google's play downloads are likely to be on par with App Store downloads at the end of May.

Given two store's prices, Dediu told ZDNet it was "very likely" that Google Play downloads will surpass the App Store in June.

However, it is the large number of Android devices that will drive Google Play in the lead, since iOS owners tend to install more apps than Android owners per unit.

According to Dediu, there are 83 apps per iOS device while there are 53 apps every Android device activation. He added that the gap between the two companies on this metric showed no sign of narrowing.

Liam Tung is an Australian business technologies for many Swedish journalist living a few miles north of Stockholm for its flavor. He received a Bachelor's degree in economics and art (cultural studies) at Sydney's Macquarie University, but hack (no Nordic or malware for that matter) their way into a career as an enterprise tech, security and telecommunications journalist with ZDNet Australia. These days Liam is a full-time freelance technology journalist who writes for various Australian publications, including Sydney Morning Herald online. He is primarily interested in how technology affects the way businesses and people communicate, trade and consume.

Smartphone App Wrap: Beer, hockey, UNO, passwords, and magazines

Summary: Android, iOS, WP8 and BB10 apps include UNO & Friends, LevelUp, 1Password, Scout, Zinio, Untappd, NHL GameCenter, and Password Keeper.

(Image: UNO & Friends)

Platform: Android

Price: Free

We still play lots of board and card games in my family and one of my favorites is UNO. The new Android UNO & Friends game lets you play friends and fans around the world through Facebook Connect (Google+ support is coming).

Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.