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Somebody Tried To Convince a Raspberry Pi Exec To Install Malware On Its Devices (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Liz Upton, Director of Communications for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has just published an email where someone was asking how much would it cost them for the Foundation to install malware on its devices in the form of a .EXE file. The email sender was asking for a PPI [price per install] quote.
That's just stupid on so many layers.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Hey, free money. Not like the PI has any permanent storage so they'd just have to stick the file on some chip somewhere, where it can't really be accessed. Not that an .exe would even be executable.
Better yet - ship every Raspberry PI with an SD card labelled "Malware - Please execute immediately."
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Kind of like distributing a .deb for your Windows 10 machine, isn't it?
Was the price too low?
Check deeper in the binary blob that is the broadcom processor and find out.
So after reading the email, I would have to say this headline is sensationalist, and overall bad reporting. So much so that im actually making this post, which i have never done on /.
Nowhere are they asking them to install malware, or install it without the consumers consent. Essentially what they are asking is that their application be packaged with with the pi, and the user be asked to install the software. Basically the same thing most "freeware" on the internet does. He you want our app? What about this one and this one and this one to.
Ive dealt with representatives from foreign companies before, and their command of the English language is about as excellent as google translate will allow. You have to use your brain a little when reading them, but its usually fairly easy to understand and don't leap to conclusions to create headlines like this.
Sure - install it on a Linux system and include in the documentation:
"Hey! We helped subsidize the cost of your device by including malware on it. If you really, really want to run it, you can install wine but without installing that framework or some sort of Windows emulator it will not run so we felt it is a safe choice to include on the system. It is located in /tmp and will be cleaned up by a cron job after a week, and it isn't marked as executable so even if it were a Linux executable it would not run without your adjusting permissions anyhow, but we urge you out of principle to do an 'rm /tmp/scumbag-sucker-malware.exe' at your first opportunity."
Offer it at a discounted price, and the malware-free version at the usual price. As a bonus dox the malware provider. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Successful hardware builder gets approached to pre-install crapware. Nothing unusual about that, unless you consider a marketing/sales drone not knowing that the Raspberry Pi does not run Windows exceptional. I don't think it is.
So, Google wants Android pre-installed?
That's just stupid on so many layers.
And that's where the problem with the story is: Who, especially a "black hat" would make such an approach or advise their "marketing" team to do so? I find it difficult to believe.
Not saying it didn't happen, but I think it's suspect. It's possible that it's a "false flag". Or perhaps it's completely made up by someone at RaspberryPi? Why would they censor the name of the offending company? Wouldn't they want people to know who's doing this sort of thing?
Too many questions to buy this completely.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It is just the usual spam that turns up from time to time. More likely a phishing/fishing exercise to see if the email address is valid before sending more.
I have received these and others over the past few months.
who's married to the Pi hardware designer, and who made tasteless and morbid jokes on her Twitter stream about Steve Jobs' and him dying from pancreatic cancer?
Why the redaction? Sounds bogus
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's got a non-free bootloader which we have zero control over and is against the users interest. There are more freedom friendly boards out there including the original Cubbie Board and Banana
It's just a generic form-letter email that would have been sent to an auto-generated list of any number of systems integrators and anyone else that might possibly respond. That's how the bloatware that gets included in Windows PCs ends up on there, it could be describing SymantecNortonLenovoToshibaHuluNetflixCyberlinkDellSkype7ZipAccuweatherRealTek SuperEssentialClickOnMe.
In any case there's already a malware-installer "EXE file that installs a desktop shortcut, that when clicked redirects users to a specific website" for the Raspberry Pi.
OMG! Are there people alive that are this stupid? Oh, right. Most government officials...
-rwxrw-rw- 1 pi pi 582 Apr 23 1999 Carved Stone.bmp
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Mar 9 2015 Desktop
drwxrwxrwx 3 pi pi 4096 Sep 4 11:51 Devel
-rwxr--r-- 1 pi pi 49 May 15 2015 golog
drwxr-xr-x 3 pi pi 4096 Nov 8 22:40 indiecity
drwxr-xr-x 4 504 staff 4096 Feb 11 2013 mcpi
drwxrwxr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Mar 10 2013 python_games
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 254 Mar 15 2014 test.js
drwxr-xr-x 3 pi pi 4096 Mar 9 2015 tmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 5 Dec 26 01:10 totally_lame_malmare.exe
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.