Worried about the security of your Android phone? You may have a good reason. Lately, it seems like every day a new vulnerability pops up in the news. Google has just fixed a vulnerability in Chrome. Microsoft is still struggling with issues with its Print Spooler utility. The National Vulnerability Database currently has over 150,000 entries. And your phone then?
According to Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center, of the 3,335 free and paid mobile apps on the Google Play Store in the first quarter of 2021, 63% had known security vulnerabilities. Amazingly, each app was also found to have an average of 39 vulnerabilities.
Of the 18 app categories examined, financial and gaming apps have the highest vulnerability. Almost all of them, especially 96% of the top free games on Google Play, had security vulnerabilities. When you add that to 94% of top-paying games and 80% of top-paying games, it’s clear that gambling is the biggest threat to your phone.
The second most dangerous category should be the most protected: financial applications. 88% of banking apps, 84% of budgeting apps, and 80% of payment apps have some form of vulnerability. Since these apps are designed to handle some of our most sensitive data, this is of great concern.
The good news is that only 44% of vulnerabilities found in Android apps were classified as high risk. And of the existing vulnerabilities, 94% were found with publicly documented fixes.
