Brace yourself for the headlines as a new report suggests Apple’s iPhones face double as many phishing threats as Androids. It’s true — but it’s also misleading. iPhones remain safer and more secure than Androids, as is made clear in the same report from Lookout that shows the top-5 “most encountered malware families” all relate to Android. iPhone “exposure” to phishing attacks is down to targeted lures and other factors.
That doesn’t mean you’re safe on Apple — it just means you’re safer. The more critical takeaway from Lookout’s report is that more than a billion devices are now vulnerable to attack, running an outdated OS “leaving a device and the data on it vulnerable to known and unknown exploits.” Again, that’s a bigger issue for Android phones than iPhones, because there are three-times as many of them. That said, Lookout warns that outdated iOS devices are more vulnerable to attack than their Android equivalents.
I’ve reported on this alarming risk before, with Zimperium’s most recent Global Mobile Threat Report highlighting that 14% of Android devices within enterprises “cannot be upgraded, leaving them susceptible to exploitation.” That report flagged the iPhone risk at a much lower 1%, albeit the percentage of overall Androids and iPhones that can’t be upgraded is about the same across both operating systems.
When it comes to the threat from mobile malware, Lookout calls out “spyware, surveillanceware, trojans, and root enablers [as] just a few of the many classifications of mobile malware that security teams should be concerned about. With wide-ranging abilities including tracking location, stealing data stored on the device, listening in on conversations, and accessing the device’s camera, these malware families can help a threat actor live in the pocket of your employee while putting the organization’s sensitive data and personnel at significant risk.”
This week we have seen U.S., U.K., and other intelligence agencies issue a joint warning on the threat to both iPhones and Androids from sophisticated spyware attacks, mostly emanating from China. That should help reinforce the point.
The rudimentary math suggests upwards of a billion devices now out on thin ice, and those need to be upgraded for something able to run a current OS and to receive security updates. We’re all concerned about the nightmare as 750 million PCs come off support in October when Windows 10 retires. There are more phones at risk than that.
