Slashdot Mirror

What we don't have is people focused on finding, removing, and spouting a product yet like Norton/McAffee/AVG/whatever.

Oh we don't, do we?

If Viruses did not exist, it would be necessary for AV companies to create them.

The Joker exists because of Bat Man. Bat Man exists because of the crime in Gotham. Both Bat Man and The Joker can use their resources to fight or cause crime.
Darth Vader exists because of the Jedi, the Jedi Order exists because of crime in the Universe. The Force can be used for good and evil.

It's a Yen & Yang sort of thing. Good and Evil are relative terms, subject to interpretation.

Crackers exist because of Hackers. AV exists because of malware in CyberSpace. The Source can be used for good or evil.

Hackers hack on the hardware / environments that they have available. Hackers can turn bad, and become Crackers, and use their but first they must have a genuine interest and exposure to a platform in order to exploit it.

Some platforms cater more to the Hackers, and they are less frustrated with the platform; Thus, less become Crackers for such platforms. Other platforms shun the Hacker, frustration fuels the desire to become a Cracker, and more malware is released which exploits such platforms...

What we don't have is people focused on finding, removing, and spouting a product yet like Norton/McAffee/AVG/whatever.

Oh we don't, do we?

Your hypothesis sounds reasonable, but in this case, it's not Apple. It's a company marketing an "anti-malware" package for any smartphone they can convince people is unsafe. You can see why they might want you to think Android is more vulnerable than it is.

...in particular. They're just selling anti-malware software for smartphones. They'll be glad to sell you protection for your RIM, WinMo, or Symbian phone, too. They're also glad to point out the danger you're in with those phones, too - lacking their product.

Presumably?

From the "report":

As a result, SMobile has incorporated patent pending technology to use application permissions and other identifying attributes to determine what an application can do and subsequently, identify Spyware and other malicious applications..

Read the pdf; it's quite entertaining. Apparently listing a certain set of permission flags as "OMG spywarez!!1!" is now a "patent pending method".

Why hello, WrongSizeGlass of the 'gives iPads to web designer's family' fame. Whilst the submission may be interesting, I cannot avoid querying your motives. But putting that aside, I'm not that convinced with the white paper either.

Smobile systems, the authors of said whitepaper, sell security software for mobile devices. They therefore have the clearest possible vested interest in producing documents that overstate whatever they can in order to trigger alarmist histrionics. All they seem to have done here is an 'automated analysis' checking out which apps have permissions that could allow them to perform certain actions. They haven't apparently chosen to take the useful step of checking what proportion of apps actually do, meaning that what they've done is the equivalent of saying:

"2.1 million Americans work in payroll or accounting. This means that up to 1.5% of all Americans could be involved in corporate accounting fraud! Concerned? Buy our Anti-Fraud(TM) corporate services!"

Virtually meaningless.

A decent review from the Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/23/android_security/

Shouldn't Palm at least be checking to see if the apps are malware?

'cause Apple's application inspection regime has worked well to prevent malware, right?

If your platform security relies on code inspection to catch malware, you're setting yourself up for epic fail.

Is that functionality malware? From post #29585841,

I was curious if this was possible on other devices. Seems like all the big ones have some API functionality to retrieve similar information:

- http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/8540/Retrieve_phone_number_BB_device_565546_11.jsp Blackberry

- http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2004/11/28/271110.aspx Windows Mobile

- http://www.forum.nokia.com/infocenter/index.jsp?topic=/S60_5th_Edition_Cpp_Developers_Library/GUID-3EB7E846-A29F-4546-B04D-A90B009903EF.html [nokia.com] Symbian (while on casual inspection there appears to be no function to retrieve the phone number, you can retrieve the IMEI, and be notified on events such as phone calls, at which point you can retrieve the caller ID as well as the dialed number)

- http://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/TelephonyManager.html Android (requires permissions be granted to the app)

So it's malware on the iPhone, when it's a supported API on a number of other platforms, except Symbian.

OTOH, this is good for Palm - we'll soon be inundated with Norton Antivirus for WebOS, McAfee Antivirus for WebOS, etc. Just like Symbian and I believe WinMo have. After all, we can't have another Liberty virus that afflicted PalmOS devices. (This was named after the Liberty Game Boy Emulator for PalmOS).

And I suppose, good for developers of fart apps, flashlight apps, and other spam apps. Last one was particularly interesting. Helps the Pre's app numbers, though.