More malicious mobile apps detected in China in 2014: conference

Around 22.92 million mobile Internet users in China suffered due to malicious applications in 2014, 3.76 times more than in the previous year, data from the 2015 CNCERT Annual Conference showed Wednesday.

Hosted by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center (CNCERT), the conference aims to present emerging concerns in network security and discuss new approaches to dealing with them.

CNCERT detected 951,059 malicious applications in 2014, which was 1.35 times the number in the previous year, 5.84 times that in 2012, and 152.19 times the 2011 figure, statistics showed, indicating explosive growth in malicious programs as mobile networks grow in popularity.

Around 55 percent are malicious payment programs, and 12.9 percent steal users' privacy information, said Yan Hanbing, a senior CNCERT official.

Android devices are the most vulnerable, targeted by 99.9 percent of all malicious apps, Yan said, which resulted in attacks on more than 15.75 million users in 2014.

As of the end of 2014, China's Internet penetration rate was 47.9 percent, with 3.65 million websites and 649 million people online, 557 million of them via mobile phones.

CNCERT is a professional organization for technical response to computer network security incidents. Endit