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Android Rootkit Is Just a Phone Call Away

Posted by samzenpus on from the dial-M-for-malware dept.

alphadogg writes "Hoping to understand what a new generation of mobile malware could resemble, security researchers will demonstrate a malicious 'rootkit' program they've written for Google's Android phone next month at the Defcon hacking conference in Las Vegas. Once it's installed on the Android phone, the rootkit can be activated via a phone call or SMS message, giving attackers a stealthy and hard-to-detect tool for siphoning data from the phone or misdirecting the user. 'You call the phone, the phone doesn't ring, and when the phone realizes that it's being called by an attacker's phone number, it sends him back a shell [program],' said Christian Papathanasiou, a security consultant with Chicago's Trustwave, the company that did the research."

4 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. just like installing a trojan on your computer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...which could let the hacker get access.

    I am an Android developer--- and this article is fail. If a user just installs whatever app--- giving it whatever permissions to their phone.. how is this any different from a stupid user installing an app on their PC/MAC that has a trojan built in?

    And the ability to "listen" for a call is called a BroadcastReceiver. It's nothing special or hackish. Think a trigger ruleset for Android like you have for your mail client.

    Good god.

    1. Re:just like installing a trojan on your computer! by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      (If they can rootkit my Milestone down past the locked loader, I want to know how! [Yeah, of course I got an Android phone, it was .. destiny.])

      Odds are there are far more stupid "smartphone" users than PC/Mac ones.

      Want to tap virgin pools of stupidity? There's an app for it!

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  2. Wow this article makes it so scary by Technomancer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From TFA: "The rootkit could also track a victim's location or even reroute his browser to a malicious Web site."
    Really? And then what? The malicious website will install another worse rootkit?
    It has rootkit! The phone is compromised, all the information you have on it is potentially leaked and the phone doesn't belong to your carrier anymore (it never belonged to you, you realize that, right?) it belongs to the rootkit operator. The only cure is to either flash it with fresh OS or burn it with fire.

  3. It will be. by maillemaker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    >Is hacking mobile phones a big business nowadays? Should we expect to see more security issues with our smartphones as >they increase in popularity? I'm not being facetious, I come here because I don't know these answers. If it's not, it will be. Clearly there is big business to be made in compromising traditional computer systems today. In the early days (and I've been around computers since the TI99/4A) it seems that "viruses" were primarily made as a prank. But today the biggest threats seem to be botnets which are used for profit to either propagate spam and execute denial of service attacks through distributed means, or simply to skim valuable user account data off of the compromised systems. This is all far beyond the amateur pranks of old. It is now done for financial gain. Cell phones have rapidly become computers. All the benefits of compromising traditional computers will likely follow.

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