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New Android Malware Uses Google Play Icon To Trick Users
An anonymous reader writes "A new trojan for Android has been discovered that can help carry out Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The malware is also capable of receiving commands from criminals as well as sending text messages for spamming purposes. The threat, detected as "Android.DDoS.1.origin" by Russian security firm Doctor Web, likely spreads via social engineering tricks. The malware disguises itself as a legitimate app from Google, according to the firm."
Actually the android sandbox is quite sophisticated. Jellybean will randomize the location of an application's memory region in order to make buffer overflow attacks harder. Granular permissions allow a user to know exactly what an app wants to do before they even install it (it's written into the API that the app must ask for these permissions). Also Google does automated malware testing on their store in order to weed out undesirables. This thing is spread by installing an APK off of a warez site and ignoring all the scary warnings.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Not to mention that by default you aren't allowed to install an APK from a source besides the play store, you have to manually disable that restriction.