Lately, it seems like a new security vulnerability hits the news every day. Google just patched a vulnerability in Chrome. Microsoft is still dealing with issues with its Print Spooler utility. The National Vulnerability Database currently has over 150,000 entries. So, what about your phone?
According to the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center, as of Q1 2021, out of the 3,335 free and paid mobile applications in the Google Play store, 63% have known security vulnerabilities. Amazingly, it also found that each app has 39 vulnerabilities on average.
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Of the 18 categories of apps examined, gaming and financial apps were found to have the most vulnerabilities. Almost all—96%, specifically—of the top free games on Google Play had vulnerabilities. Add that to 94% of top-grossing games and 80% of top paid games, and it’s clear that games pose the biggest threat to your phone.
The next-most-dangerous category should be the most protected: financial apps. It was found that 88% of banking, 84% of budgeting, and 80% of payment apps all had some kind of vulnerability. As these apps are meant to manage some of our most sensitive data, this is very concerning.
The good news is that only 44% of the discovered Android app vulnerabilities were classified as high-risk. And out of the existing vulnerabilities, 94% were found to have publicly documented fixes.
