Android is one of the fastest growing OS in the market today but along with its development is the growth of something that is unwanted - Malware.

According to the Juniper Global Threat Center, Android experienced a staggering 472% increase in malware samples since July 2011. The firm also revealed that the fastest activity in Malware happens during October and November. The company discussed their findings further stating that "The number of malware samples identified in September increased by 28 percent over the number of the known Android malware samples. October showed a 110 percent increase in malware sample collection over the previous month and a striking 171 percent increase from what had been collected up to July 2011." Aside from the massive volume of malware growth, most malware attacks are getting sophisticated in their technique. Based on the report done by Juniper, Android malware were already capable of leveraging one or several platform vulnerabilities which would allow attackers to have the root or main access on the device. This form of attack was observed during Spring of this year and has spread to almost all kinds of malware. Presently, 90% of Android devices are still carried around by users.

Juniper was not the only one who identified this increase in malware attack to Android. McAfee also discussed the malware situation on Android in their McAfee Threats Report for this third quarter. According to the report, the cumulative malware for Android has already exceeded 70 million and this number would still continue to grow up to 75 million unique malware samples by the end of the year 2011. The report also mentioned that attackers are already changing their tactics which allowed them to protect their business models and do this kind of crime in a very sophisticated manner thus making them more dangerous.

One of the reasons why Android is ideal for this kind of attack is because most of the applications are not vetted before it appears on the Google's app store. This means that a developer account could post any kind of application for people without undergoing a verification process. On the other hand, Google is not convinced about this malware situation and remarked that security companies are doing this in order to scare users in buying their products. Chris DiBona, an open source program manager in the company released a statement about this issue saying "No major cellphone has a 'virus' problem in the traditional sense that windows and some Mac machines have seen. There have been some little things, but they haven't gotten very far."

At present, there are already 200 million activated Android devices and there are 250,000 more Android devices being activated every day.