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HTC Android Phones Found With Malware Pre-Installed

Posted by Soulskill on from the saving-users-time-and-effort dept.

Trailrunner7 writes "Security researchers have found that Vodafone, one of the world's larger wireless providers, is distributing some HTC phones with malware pre-installed on them. The phone, HTC's Magic, runs the Google Android mobile operating system, and is one of the more popular handsets right now. A researcher at Panda Software received one of the handsets recently, and upon attaching it to her PC, found that the phone was pre-loaded with the Mariposa bot client. Mariposa has been in the news of late thanks to some arrests connected to the operation of the botnet."

5 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Technically, not installed... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The software in question was an autorun file, so it wasn't installed on the phone, it was just present on the phone's flash drive waiting to try to infect any OS stupid enough to automatically run programs from untrusted devices. It's not like the phone was running a botnet client and using up your data allowance sending spam, it was just a carrier.

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    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    1. Re:Technically, not installed... by AndrewNeo · · Score: 2, Informative

      And if it's an autorun file, that means only XP and earlier, and very stupid users are vulnerable. Vista and 7 don't execute Autorun.exe by default.

    2. Re:Technically, not installed... by clone53421 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wrong, it was replaced with Autorun.inf, and Vista/7 do execute it if you choose to “Autoplay” the device. I believe the dialog will appear first to ask you what you want to do, but “Autoplay” is the top choice and is selected by default.

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      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
    3. Re:Technically, not installed... by nicolas.kassis · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ok... go lookup the story about iPods loaded with trojans that got through QA. http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2006/10/19/187622.aspx This has nothing to do with android/apple and everything to do with crappy manufacturing using infected windows PC that will infect any usb connected device.

    4. Re:Technically, not installed... by clone53421 · · Score: 2, Informative

      No... it will autoplay if you give it permission to autoplay.

      You don’t tell it to. It asks, and the default option is to allow it. All you have to do is click Ok.

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      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.