Vodafone: 3,000+ HTC Magic Phones Infected
It's a botnet thriving on HTC Magic smartphones.
We've kept tabs of the whole HTC Magic infection drama since the original report was released by Panda last week. However now Vodafone is shedding a little more light on the overall epidemic, claiming that more than 3,000 HTC Magic phones are infected with malware. So much for the supposed "isolated incident."
Wireless Week reports that Vodafone is currently investigating the issue, however the problem is linked to a batch of memory cards that were infected by the Maripose botnet. Before it was brought down earlier this month, this nasty piece of malware reached out to 12.7 million PCs and stole private credit card and banking information.
A spokesperson for Vodafone said that the infection has remained in Spain, and is not an issue of HTC or Android. The company is currently gathering a list of customers who received the infected memory cards in order to distribute "clean" replacements.
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Yes, it is not a HTC or Android issue; it's the employee that planted this on the cards, very likely for a nice amount of money.
ID theft is organized crime and pays well. And, when the little employee goes down, there will be other 10 to take his place.
Expect this trend to expand to other brands/carriers, as pretty much every company that sells you a memory card can have a weasel in it's rank.
At least, always format cards before first use.
Vodafone? More like Toyotafone. Can you say "recall"?
hahaha
that's like saying that anything the iphone lacks is "not the iphones fault, or apples fault.. but the employee who programmed that part of the OS is to blame."
hahahathat's like saying that anything the iphone lacks is "not the iphones fault, or apples fault.. but the employee who programmed that part of the OS is to blame."
I think its more like saying that if a car rental employee smears ecoli all over the insides of the rental cars and customers get sick, that Ford isn't to blame.
hahahathat's like saying that anything the iphone lacks is "not the iphones fault, or apples fault.. but the employee who programmed that part of the OS is to blame."
No, I think its more like saying that if a car rental employee smears ecoli all over the insides of the rental cars and customers get sick, that Ford isn't to blame.
Dont even get me started in europe. It's even more corrupted than our screwed up country.
You all knew the day was coming... this may be coincidence, but it goes to show very well that the Anti-Virus Industry will have a product that you will want to install in your smartphone in the near future.
Am i the only one who's wondering when phones will come with antivirus? I mean if you use the phone to shop and bank online, wouldn't it be prudent to get a phone that can run antivirus?
Obviously the phones are not secure and they are by no means private.
Am i the only one who's wondering when phones will come with antivirus? I mean if you use the phone to shop and bank online, wouldn't it be prudent to get a phone that can run antivirus?
First of all those phones had flashcards infected with x86 win32 binary viruses. It is physically impossible to run it on a arm Linux with a spooky clib. Only way to get into trouble was to connect it to a windows box and run the virus before your anti-virus catches it. There are very few Linux viruses and most(if not all) of them won't run on this platform. Only way to get Android infected is to create malware dedicated only for this system and find a way around Linux/Android security/permission system Hackers are fruitlessly looking for a way to do this for months in order to root their phones without flashing them and so far we had no luck. Any way the worst case is you'll get a infected app that has no access to other apps data and important system resources. It's far more likely you'll be screwed by a wifi sniffer, phishing app or site or from your pc than you'll catch a virus on an Android device.
No, I think its more like saying that if a car rental employee smears ecoli all over the insides of the rental cars and customers get sick, that Ford isn't to blame.
Well E-Coli itself is not harmful. Only when it is infected with a bad virus does it do anything to people.
actually, lots of people have E. Coli living in their gut. In north america, we seem to have a less aggressive strain of E. Coli than elsewhere, which accounts for why some people get travellers diarhhea on vacations. Of course, other strains exist in NA as well. If you get too much E. Coli or an "aggressive" strain, it can be quite harmful.
I'm guessing Panda is getting to launch it's Android Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, security suite of utilities for the Android phones...