Virus attack on Android Market turns out to be Symantec bug

    Many users of mobile systems criticize the application store from Google for the fact that in it, unlike the AppStore, there is no moderation of hosted applications. In addition to the self-evident freedom of developers who can publish their programs very quickly, an attacker is approximately as free to place malicious code on the Android Market and only after obvious scandals, Google can remove it.

    This week on Habré there was a publication, the meaning of which was that Symantec experts discovered the fact that the Trojan was downloaded by users of the Android Market - and up to 5 million people turned out to be victims of malicious code. The role of the bait was played by games with names like “Sexy puzzle”, which requested access to almost all the communication and location capabilities of the phone, although they were released by a fairly well-known publisher. Then, Symantec described the attack as "large", while, curiously, a special response from Google is not followed - the company refused to remove the application (for example, a game from the "black list" Wild Man Ogre Games From fully available in the market, though someone then from the users and left a comment that the “program has a virus”).

    Symantec today officially acknowledged that they were mistaken. Experts incorrectly evaluated the application code, admitting that, although it is engaged in a kind of “arbitrariness”, creating and changing bookmarks in the browser and setting the home page, there is no actual danger to the user, because by some URL only these same data and can be sent by a "malicious" application. The “suspect” turned out to be a certain advertising module built into the games, which its authors had already promised to rework in order to avoid such annoying misunderstandings in the future.

    Google's Open Source Project Manager: Mobile Antiviruses Are Useless

    [Source - Symantec ]

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