Android malware hijacks power button, empties wallet while you sleep Security biz AVG has spotted an outbreak of a new kind of Android malware that will come alive even when the phone is supposedly switched off. The software nasty is able to do this by hijacking the mobe's power-off sequence. Android malware No shutdown for you! Part of the Android shutdown sequence "After pressing the …
Granting temporary root permission is unfortunately too streamlined. Put up dialog box with a "Continue" button. Wait two seconds. Ask for root. Finger taps "Allow." You could probably improve timing using the camera, gyros, or touchscreen diagnostics to detect motions immediately preceding a touch. A countermeasure could be granting root permission using a gesture that's easy to abort.
1. Ok so I'm running 5.0 so no current threat. But when they crack that. ..
2. They have to get the app recommended to me by a trusted source. But when...
3. They have to get it both into Play Store (not difficult?) and keep it there (more difficult). But when...
4. Get over my obsessive hangup about permissions. But when...
5. They can rip me off for all of £2 being my Tesco Mobile cap.
Yes its bad but not bad enough to lose sleep over. YMMV.
There is a big problem with malware on Android. Android users tend to be from the third world so are less likely to be able to pay for apps so get dodgy versions that often have malware. Its why Google Play apps are much lower quality than Apples apps because its so hard to Android developers to make any money. Those that do write Android apps tend to be 'just having a go' type developers who like the idea of being an app developer even though they make no money from it.
Thanks for registering just to write unsubstantiated almost-racist rubbish.
Android users tend to be from "the third world"? Hardly: many android (and winphone) devices are often the same price or more than the apple equivalents. This doesn't equate with them being used by "poor people".
For some reference statistics, which you will doubtless enjoy manipulating and misreading to give whatever picture you want: smartphone % penetration by country..
Back to your "third world" angle: Here's a breakdown of the US's smartphones by OS. Unless you are going to now state that the USians are in fact living in a third world country, would you care to explain this?
Relating back into the first stats, here's one showing worldwide market share..
While it is interesting to note that the US has a more balanced split of Apple vs Android in it's market, the US is only 13th in overall smartphone penetration. Some "third world" countries such as Spain and Germany have rather higher OS splits in favour of Android compared to Apple.
One point to note is that in the developing markets the price paid for handsets is less than in the developed markets. This necessarily skews the market split away from Apple as other than 2nd hand or older devices, most Apple phones are priced out of the reasonable disposable income price range - food, heating, clothes, education or mobile phone? WinPhone devices are making reasonable inroads into these price constrained markets but nothing compared to feature phones and to a lesser extent "landfill" android phones. It's these phones that will be targetted by this kind of exploit, they are often unsupported, never updated by their manufacturer and often too costly for an end user to even consider the data bandwidth to peform an update and often as a result they have access to local app stores and not Google Play. However this does not mean that an app that requires Root access will work as even the landfill devices don't come with root access as standard.
Basically, it's a security scare story from an advertiser that's sole reason for existing is to sell security products.
(EDIT: some of the links may not work as the damn stat site sometimes arbitrarily requires a signin to view the stats. sorry).
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