back to article French cops cuff man over €500K Android Trojan scam

French police have arrested a 20-year-old man who allegedly earned €500,000 (£405,00, $650,000) through an Android malware scam. The unnamed perp from the Amiens region allegedly tricked 17,000 victims into installing a Trojan that posed as a legitimate application on their Android smartphones. In reality, the malicious …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Tom 38
    Stop

    I don't get these scams. To benefit, you have to collect from the premium rate revenues, which surely leads directly to you - as this witless twunt found out.

    Do you use a patsy to collect the profits before scarpering, or fake identities? Either way, seems likely to get nabbed.

    1. Infidellic_
      Coat

      Welcome, my friend, to the murky world of money laundering....

      My coat's the one with the drop in it

      1. Infidellic_

        Or you know bank with HSBC Mexico: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18993476

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Patsies

      "Do you use a patsy to collect the profits"...."

      Spam email offering work from home, "...you must be resident in <chosen country> and have a bank account".

      The patsy keeps a percentage of the money arriving in his/her bank account and sends the bulk of it via Western Union to non-existent people in Russia, Ukraine, etc.

      When the cops arrest one patsy, you switch to another.

      Simples.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All possible thanks to wonderful openness of Android. Just as inviting to cyber-crooks as an open door is to a burglar.

    1. ZeroP
      FAIL

      You'd be hard pressed to find any malware at all if you obtained your software legitimately, same goes for OSX and Windows, AC troll.

  3. Fatman

    Malware authors ....

    should be:

    1) drawn and quartered,

    2) burned alive,

    3) publicly flogged to death,

    4) have their fingers and toes hacked off with a machete, then promptly beheaded,

    5) used for live bayonet training at a military training base,

    6) strapped into an electric chair, whose power source is controlled by a relay, connected to an internet facing computer, with the IP address publicly posted for the world to take note, (the voltage being limited to being non lethal for a non disclosed amount of time, then "all bets off").

    Choose one as the preferred method of execution.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Malware authors ....

      And that includes the witless pillocks who insist on bundling useless bloody toolbars and McAfee etc., sodding software as completely unrelated, unnecessary and unwanted, yet preselected installs, with bloody Acrobat Reader and Java updates.

      Malware is as malware does, and that's bloody malware

    2. DJ Smiley
      Thumb Up

      Re: Malware authors ....

      7. Forced to code in Visual Basic.

      1. Thomas 4
        Devil

        @DJ

        7a. Forced to code in Visual Basic on a ZX81 keyboard.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @DJ

          Forced to code in EDT on a VAX/VMS (screen update time in 20 seconds) ...

      2. Fatman

        Re: Malware authors ....

        A better idea - code in machine language without the use of a compiler aka 'hand assembly".

        1. Crazy Operations Guy

          Re: machine language without the use of a compiler

          The 'better' ones already do that, especially in cases of rootkits, buffer-overflows and return-oriented programming. using a compiler would make this work very difficult to do, if not impossible.

          1. This Side Up

            Re: machine language without the use of a compiler

            "The 'better' ones already do that, especially in cases of rootkits, buffer-overflows and return-oriented programming. using a compiler would make this work very difficult to do, if not impossible."

            There's a difference between a compiler, a symbolic assembler and writing in machine code in hex or octal.

            Perhaps they should be made to enter their programs in binary using the keyswitches on the front of a PDP8, or was it an 11?

            1. FutureShock999
              Boffin

              Re: machine language without the use of a compiler

              It was a COSMAC Elf, of course...

        2. Timothy Rayner
          Happy

          Re: Malware authors ....

          I enjoyed typing in HEX - it was... therapeutic. I miss my "Micro Professor" and it's little bank of LED lights, segmented displays and code lookup book.

          They should be forced to code in HTML5 and be told to make it compatible with IE6.

      3. kain preacher

        Re: Malware authors ....

        Make them write code in an EDLIN clone on a tablet.

    3. nuked
      Meh

      Re: Malware authors ....

      Define malware lol. Not many legitimate pieces of software are squeeky clean on the privacy front.

    4. Steven Roper
      Thumb Up

      Re: Malware authors ....

      7) All of the above, and take your time about it too.

  4. Da Weezil

    "And that includes the witless pillocks who insist on bundling useless bloody toolbars and McAfee etc., sodding software as completely unrelated, unnecessary and unwanted, yet preselected installs, with bloody Acrobat Reader and Java updates."

    ..... and Google bloody Chrome.. the one way to ensure I NEVER try a piece of software is to try to ram it down my throat everywhere I go (acrobat) or sneak it in with a pre-selected (but still unwanted) option during in an install.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      especially on updates

      I don't mind asking to install some crap on the first install as much as I do when it asks on every single fscking update (I'm looking at you Java)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Anything wrong officer?

    What? Isn't that how developers are supposed to make money on Android?

    Paris, because she's not a stranger to French Trojans.

  6. dreamingspire
    Unhappy

    Hand assembled? Have done that fully legit - for an 8035 microcontroller some 30 years ago and got quite good at it - fixing bugs in some equipment that the company that I was a director of handled.

  7. Arachnoid
    Trollface

    I thought Paris prefered the use of Dongles

This topic is closed for new posts.