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Over 60% of Android Malware Hides In Fake Versions of Popular Apps
An anonymous reader writes "Like any popular platform, Android has malware. Google's mobile operating system is relatively new, however, so the problem is still taking form. In fact, it turns out that the larger majority of threats on Android come from a single malware family: Android.FakeInstaller, also known as OpFake, which generates revenue by silently sending expensive text messages in the background. McAfee says that the malware family makes up more than 60 percent of Android samples the company processes."
Meh...
If you are not smart enough to install non-market Android apps, you have no problem.
If you are smart enough to install non-market Android apps, you know what you are getting into.
With great power comes great responsibility. I think these pieces keep surfacing because the Anti-Virus companies desperately need to get into this market. They see it is the future and they want a piece of it.
Top of article:
End of article:
So in essence this article is a nearly-worthless scare piece. Unless you're downloading "pirated" versions of (presumably) commercial apps from a shady source, this article isn't relevant. But then, it's a McAfee article, so surprise.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
And there is less crime we we force everyone to never go out.
But, you enjoy your shiny toy and take whatever the deem you worthy of having.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Technically, not a problem for Android users who stay in Google's walled garden either. Now, we can debate the merits of walled gardens but the article itself is just trying to gin up business for McAfee and citing running unknown sources as evidence of some malware problem when the issue is the user, not the system, since that is off by default.
Someone help me with that one. So it tricks users into sending an expensive SMS. So how in the world does that enrich the hackers? I pay my SMS fees to AT&T. Are we saying that AT&T is behind these attacks?
The solution, of course, will be to buy Macafee's Android security offerings.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
It's 2012 - most phones can connect to a mail server over 2G, 3G or wifi.
Why are we still messing around with a 140-character hack that belongs in the 1990s and which requires the recipient to be using a phone?
Just send an e-mail.
Android does not have >80% market share. It's something just over 50%. Windows had more than 95% at it's peak. So no, that wasn't the point of similarity. The point of similarity is it's a Typhoid Mary platform.
iOS isn't prone to malware and it's because of it's walled garden and app sandboxes, not because of marketshare.
Some of the legitimate apps at the legitimate app store have messed up policies as well:
Mass Effect Infiltrator: needs to be able to change network connectivity, modify system settings, read phone status and ID and be able to read my contacts. Why?
Order & Chaos online: needs to be able to edit text msgs, read txt msgs, receive txt msgs, change network connectivity incl connecting+disconnecting from wi-fi, disable my screen lock, send SMS messages, read phone status and ID, and run at startup. Why?
I skipped buying either of these even when they were priced at $0.25 because of the bizarre permission policies.
Rooting an iphone and installing apps from strange sources in Android are both like living in the ghetto. Using an unrooted iPhone is like living in a jail (mmm, I wonder where I got this analogy from.). Using Android and installing apps only from Play Store, Amazon store, and app you write/your friends write, is the real equivalent to living in a decent neighborhood.
Android is living in a ghetto.
Honest question:
Does describing Android this way make you feel better about your iPhone purchase?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
"The answer is a single walled garden" is the part that amazes me. Walled gardens, or peer reviewed software are good answers, but a single one? I'm utterly amazed that people will voluntarily pay a lot of money to be locked into a single software market on hardware from a single supplier. It very rarely ends in a happy consumer in the long run. Why not allow alternative markets? Make people *want* to use your software market, don't force them to.
You can't have it both ways. You can't cite the multiple stores of Android as an advantage, and then say that it's the user's fault they get viruses when they use these multiple stores.
If the majority of people catching malware are cheap bums who wanted pirated versions and end up paying much more in background messaging, , then it's all good, as far as I'm concerned.
Some say they first try the pirated versions for any problems before buying the real ones... Here's the thing:
- most Android apps don't cost more than a cup of coffee. Pretty cheap, considering the long hours of work needed to get some type of decent software on that platform.
- at Google Play, you can try an app for 15 minutes before getting an automatic cancel of your order.
http://support.google.com/googleplay/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134336
15 minutes is plenty of time to check if everything works as intended on your particular phone. If you discover a bug later on, you can always contact the developers who will be more than happy to make their app better on the next version.
I can't feel sorry for cheaters who get malware . Piracy is one reason (among others) why most Android developers can't make a living selling apps. It's already hard enough when you're not a big company and can't afford the advertising, and find your app on page # 120 on app search...
Actually, it's what you are saying that isn't true. It's clear you have never been an iOS developer.
I've had apps rejected 3 times. Once it was a crasher bug that the reviewer spotted that I hadn't. (Mea culpa). Once was a wording issue. And one was a button that in a certain edge case should have been disabled and wasn't.
In each case the problem was spelled out clearly. Clearly I had to stop that crash, disable that button in that certain circumstance, and change the wording. Now of clearly they didn't tell me what wording I had to use - that's my job. They just told me what was wrong with the wording I'd originally used.
Apple App Store has 700,000 apps on it. Most of those apps have had several revisions. Each and every revision of those apps has been through the app review process. The examples you've read stories about are a handful. A process gets it right hundreds of thousands of times more often than it gets it wrong doesn't sound broken. Especially when there's opportunities for resubmission and appeal.