New Android Malware Uses Google Play Icon To Trick Users

An anonymous reader writes "A new trojan for Android has been discovered that can help carry out Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The malware is also capable of receiving commands from criminals as well as sending text messages for spamming purposes. The threat, detected as "Android.DDoS.1.origin" by Russian security firm Doctor Web, likely spreads via social engineering tricks. The malware disguises itself as a legitimate app from Google, according to the firm."

Re:Linux your next...

[masternerdguy]

Linux has EXCELLENT intrusion detection as long as you're running the SELinux tools. That thing is so paranoid out of the box that an application making a file in /tmp will throw a warning. You can set it up so that an application doing anything remotely suspicious is just killed immediately and a notification sent to the admin. If you don't trust SELinux there's more proprietary tools such as AppArmor that can do the same job and are a bit friendlier to configure.

Re:This is why you want a walled-off app store

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the android sandbox is quite sophisticated. Jellybean will randomize the location of an application's...

It's too bad that it was released in June 2012, and still, nobody has it [android.com]. So while I'm sure newer versions of Android are much improved, but it doesn't much matter to anyone if the horrible manufacturers won't put an ounce of effort into maintaining the devices.

The app does not spread...

[mythosaz]

Users SPREAD the app. The app itself does not spread. It's an important distinction.

Re:This is why you want a walled-off app store

[rjr162]

....
My Samsung galaxy s3 (gt-i9000) received the 4.1.1 update about 3 or so months ago (from samsung). My neighbors Motorola atrix 2 or whatever received the 4.1.2 update about 2 months or so ago (He has verizon). The Motorola xoom I got my grand father also has received 4.1.1 iirc when I set it up for him after I received it from eBay about 3 weeks ago