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'Godless' Apps, Some Found In Google Play, Root 90% Of Android Phones (arstechnica.com)
Dan Goodin, reporting for ArsTechnica:Researchers have detected a family of malicious apps, some that were available in Google Play, that contain malicious code capable of secretly rooting an estimated 90 percent of all Android phones. In a recently published blog post, antivirus provider Trend Micro said that Godless, as the malware family has been dubbed, contains a collection of rooting exploits that works against virtually any device running Android 5.1 or earlier. That accounts for an estimated 90 percent of all Android devices. Members of the family have been found in a variety of app stores, including Google Play, and have been installed on more than 850,000 devices worldwide. Godless has struck hardest at users in India, Indonesia, and Thailand, but so far less than 2 percent of those infected are in the US. Once an app with the malicious code is installed, it has the ability to pull from a vast repository of exploits to root the particular device it's running on. In that respect, the app functions something like the many available exploit kits that cause hacked websites to identify specific vulnerabilities in individual visitors' browsers and serve drive-by exploits.Affected apps that have been spotted in Google Play, Android's marquee app store, are largely flashlight, Wi-Fi apps, as well as copies of popular games.
I see. Verizon and Samsung won't let me root my phone, but Russian and Chinese hackers can. Thanks Verizon and Samsung.
Came here to say just this. "Rooting" your phone should be a setting in a menu somewhere saying "Allow me to access my own device"; it shouldn't require searching the internet for the least-sketchy app to flip a bit somewhere.
Actually the thing with iOS is that it's virtually impossible for anybody but Apple to mass audit apps for malware. There are without a doubt malware apps on Apple's app store, but nobody has found them yet. In fact, in at least a few cases, some malware apps on iOS were only discovered after somebody found it on the Android version and decided to check the iOS version on a hunch.
I'd also add that I'd be fine with this being turned off by default (i.e. your device isn't rooted by default). Most people won't need root access for what they use their phones/tablets for. But if I want to root my phone/tablet, I can turn this on (perhaps click OK on a "this can wreck havoc with your device if you don't know what you're doing" warning) and then have root access.
Want to make it a little less likely that someone would turn on root by mistake? Do what they did with USB debugging. To turn this on, you need to go to Settings, About Phone, and tap the Build number 7 times just to get the option to display. Make it so "Enable Root Access" doesn't display unless you tap some other section like this. It would prevent casual users from accidentally getting root access while making it much easier for the rest of us to do this.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.