Slashdot Mirror
Music and Movies Could Trigger Mobile Malware
mask.of.sanity writes "Lights, sounds and magnetic fields can be used to activate malware on phones, new research has found. The lab-style attacks defined in a paper (PDF) used pre-defined signals hidden in songs and TV programmes as a trigger to activate embedded malware. Malware once activated would carry out programmed attacks either by itself or as part of a wider botnet of mobile devices."
to turn your phones off whilst watching a movie!
This sig is intentionally blank
Was a dingy rustic bar with Malcolm sitting talking to two twins and an ad appearing on TV for Fruity Oaty Bar...
Miranda...
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Lame article.
If you're already infected by malware, that malware can sit there and wait to do stuff any time it wants. Not exactly a big surprise.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
and that by Rick Astley. Researchers suspect it may be the beginning of the rise of machines against being forced to participate in human activities they find distasteful. The lead researcher also said that there's growing evidence that not only movies but also still images could have the same effect. When asked to elaborate, he mumbled something about goats and refused further comment.
This just in -- any input on your compromised device can potentially be used as a trigger for malware to launch its preprogrammed attack. News at 11!
... well, anything, really.
Seriously, what kind of nonsense is this? They *could* also use your GPS / network location to activate only in a specific location, or the compass to activate only when the phone faces Mecca, or the tilt sensor and camera together to activate only when you're trying to shoot a level picture, or
It makes not one jot of difference what they use as a trigger once your phone is compromised. The point is, it's already been compromised, and it's effectively wide-open to anything the hardware is physically capable of. How it was compromised in the first place is what's important, not meaningless conjecture on how the exploit's eventual activation can be timed in the least efficient way possible. (All this nonsensical idea would do is drain your battery in no time by holding the mic and processor active all the time, thereby ensuring the phone runs out of battery before the exploit activates.)
I mourn for the days when Slashdot posted intelligent tech articles, instead of a stream of PR puff pieces designed to spread FUD and generate clicks. There is not one useful or non-obvious piece of info in this "research".
Current Blu-ray players are already infected with malware that shuts them down when a certain pattern of sounds is detected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
Wait for the THX noise to go off (or one of a hundred common "we're starting the movie" noises), then disable the phone completely for two and a half hours.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
You are missing the point. Being triggered by sound or light means the malware can be activate by a global hack on the world's TV stations, just like happens on bad sci-fi series.
Android devices world wide will rise up and take over when the call to arms comes over the airwaves. I'm imagining a nightmarishly robotic and shadowy figure flickering across billions of TV screens, screaming "ACTIVATE! ACTIVATE!"
At that point the malware Android army will simultaneously post inane and vague status updates onto everyone's Facebook, then self destruct. No-one will be able to reply except for users of Apple and Windows, and all Android users will wither and die alone in a desert of dis-communication.
That's the nightmare scenario the writers of this dumb study had in mind, isn't it?