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Memory Cards of 3,000 Phones Infected By Malware
itwbennett sends us a few links from IT World tracing a story about infected microSD cards in Vodaphone-supplied mobile phones. "The original report came on March 8 after an employee of Panda Security plugged a newly ordered HTC Magic phone from Vodafone into a Windows computer, where it triggered an alert from the antivirus software. Further inspection of the phone found the device's 8GB microSD memory card was infected with a client for the now-defunct Mariposa botnet, the Conficker worm, and a password stealer for the Lineage game. At that point it was at thought to be an issue with a specific refurbished phone. On Wednesday another phone surfaced with traces of the Mariposa botnet. And now Vodafone is saying that as many as 3,000 HTC Magic phones may be affected."
I don't know, but I bet it begins with social networking applications.
Probably the best way to hide a bot-net on a phone.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
How do they know it's not 2,000 or 10,000. Hell, earlier this week it was an "isolated incident."
Facts have a liberal bias.
From TFA: With the first phone, the Mariposa botnet code automatically ran and attempted to infect a computer. Mariposa was at one time one of the largest botnets, but security researchers were able to shut it down in December after disabling its command-and-control servers
It's a Windows malware, right? So a "Windows" computer connect to the phones sdcard and attempts to autorun whatever on it. I don't see how the malware can somehow activated and affect Android Linux O/S running on ARM chip inside a user-mode VM. Do botnets have legs now?
It's irrelevant what operating system the malware operates on. The fact that malware came pre-loaded is troubling.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Since the walled garden (iPhone) doesn't have an SD card slot, we would not be affected. So the walled garden does protect us.
and this is what happens when you buy from the lowest bidder in china.
You want the Jitterbug.
No, it SHOULD be SOP. It should be trivial, but I haven't been in a single business where it actually was SOP. I'm not saying that there are not businesses that do it right, but you don't get to look like a hero fixing computer problems if there are no computer problems to fix.