McAfee experts claim that MITM is being attacked due to lack of security patches in Smartphone applications McAfee experts claim that MITM is being attacked due to lack of security patches in Smartphone applications Smartphone personal information is going into the hands of others. How is it possible to hack Smartphone data from a distance? Security software maker McAfee said on Tuesday that smartphones with mobile app access have become the target of cyberattacks around the world and mobile customer information, especially name-passwords used on smartphones, is at risk of being hacked.

McAfee Lab authorities recently released a report entitled 'McAfee Labs Threats Report: February 2015. Millions of Smartphone users are at risk as mobile application makers fail to patch for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) vulnerabilities, the report claims.

In September last year, Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) released a list of malicious and security vulnerable mobile applications. McAfee Labs has conducted a special experiment with 25 popular applications on that list. During this test, no patches have been added to 16 applications so far, although these applications are claimed to be safe. The most downloaded apps in this group are the mobile photo editing apps. These apps talk about sharing photos on various social networking websites and in the cloud.

According to McAfee researchers, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks are carried out using these so-called SSL security apps to snatch data from Smartphone s. To carry out a man-in-the-middle attack in terms of cryptography or computer security, the attacker must have the ability to monitor the Smartphone user or change his communication channel. Unbeknownst to the user, such an attack is made on a separate connection to his phone and the conversationalist's message is transmitted to each other. At this point, the user is told that their conversation is on a private channel, but the attacker controls the conversation. However, there is no evidence that the security of such mobile apps has been breached, the report said.

According to McAfee researchers, millions of users are at risk of MITM attacks because app developers do not have SSL security patches. McAfee's researchers warn that potentially unwanted programs (PUPS) on Smartphone s, not just MITM attacks, pose a serious risk. Using this PUPS or unwanted program, it is possible to loot all the data collected from the Smartphone without the knowledge of the user.

The number of malware or malicious programs on Smartphone s has increased by 14 percent in the last quarter of last year, from October to December. Asia and Africa have the highest rates of malware attacks.