mobile

BadNews Android Applications

Update: Google Says BadNews Malware Not-So-Bad After All?

Editor’s Note: Updated to add comments from Lookout Mobile Security. – PFR  6/10/2013 When reports surfaced about “BadNews,” a new family of mobile malware that affected Google Android devices the news sounded…well…bad. BadNews was described as a new kind of mobile malware for the Android platform-one that harness mobile ad networks to push out malicious links, harvest information on compromised devices and more. Now, six weeks later, a senior member of Google’s Android security team claims that BadNews wasn’t really all that bad, after all. Speaking at an event in Washington D.C. sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission, Google employee and Android team member Adrian Ludwig threw cold water on reports linking BadNews to sites that installed malicious programs. The search giant, he said, had not found any evidence linking BadNews to so-called SMS “toll fraud” malware. “We’ve observed the app(lication) and we’ve reviewed all the logs we have access […]

Android Zombies

Google Adds Detection For Obad Malware

Just a follow-up to our story from last week on Obad, the new family of mobile malware that affects Google Android devices: In an e-mail to The Security Ledger on Friday, Google acknowledged the existence of the Trojan horse program and has updated its detection tools to be able to identify it. In an e-mail, a Google spokeswoman said that the malware, dubbed “Obad” by Kaspersky Lab, was not found on the company’s Google Play application store. The company  added detection for the new malware to its Application Verification Tool, which protects Android users who tried to download it from a third-party application store or browser. Obad, or Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a, is described as a “multi function Trojan” that primarily acts as an SMS Trojan, surreptitiously sending short message service (SMS) messages to premium numbers. It was first described in a blog post by Kaspersky Lab researcher malware researcher Roman Unuchek last week. Unuchek […]

free speech kill chain

UN Calls Electronic Surveillance A Threat To Democracy

A new report out from the United Nations’ General Assembly warns that governments’ use of electronic surveillance and monitoring of citizen communications is a violation of human rights and calls for updated laws and guidelines that reflect changes in communications “techniques and technologies.” The growing use and sophistication of digital surveillance has outstripped the ability of societies to legislate their proper use, leading to “ad hoc practices that are beyond the supervision of any independent authority,” and that threaten to stifle free expression, according to the report, issued by the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Council (PDF). First issued in April, but released to the public this week, the report looks at States’ use of communications surveillance and their impact on what the report calls “human rights to privacy and to freedom of opinion and expression.” It concludes that the growth of online surveillance of electronic communications, including access to stored […]

Mercedes

Traffic Safety Agency Calls Vehicle Cyber Security Standards

The U.S. Government’s lead agency for vehicle safety has told Congress that more research into “vehicle cyber security” to address the threats to a coming generation of networked automobiles that connect to the public Internet and to each other. In testimony before Congress on Thursday,  David Strickland, the chief Administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told a Senate Committee that the electronics systems are “critical to the functioning” of modern autos, and are becoming increasingly interconnected, leading to “different safety and cyber security risks.”  The agency is requesting $2 million in the 2014 budget to research “vehicle electronics and emerging technologies” with an eye to developing requirements for the safety and reliability of vehicle controls. “With electronic systems assuming safety critical roles in nearly all vehicle controls, we are facing the need to develop general requirements for electronic control systems to ensure their reliability and security,” Strickland […]

BadNews Android Applications

BadNews: Mobile Attackers Pivot To Malicious Ads

The identification over the weekend of a large-scale outbreak of mobile malware dubbed “BadNews” is bad news, indeed for millions of Android device users, who downloaded applications from the official Google Play application store that connected their devices to a malicious advertising network, dubbed “BadNews.” The discovery of the malware-infected apps, which were downloaded between two- and nine million times, suggests a new wrinkle in the mobile malware space, with attackers turning to honest-seeming mobile ad networks to push out malicious links and collect information on compromised devices. “This is one of the first times that we’ve seen a malicious distribution network clearly posing as an ad network,” wrote Lookout’s Marc Rogers on the company blog. He speculated that the new tactic may reflect improved security on the Google Play app store following the introduction of the Bouncer malware scanner. Lookout said that the company notified Google, which removed the […]