Mutant Malware Threatens US Android Phones

[Guest]

The Svpeng malware has grown from a simple SMS Trojan to a sneaky piece of police ransomware, and now it's targeting U.S. Android phones.

Mutant Malware Threatens US Android Phones : Read more

 

[FFH]

With all these breaches and malware/phishing plots trying to steal financial info, I hope we don't turn into a generation that doesn't trust digital transactions. I know that the WWII generation didn't trust banks dues to the great depression. For now I'll stick to money, but I won't be stashing money between my mattresses.

 

[house70]

Where is this stuff? I would like to try it on one of my (not currently used) phones.

Thing is, this is nowhere to be found in real world. Only the AV companies have it (or "finds" it, if you please). Normal users have to REALLY screw up their devices in order to get "infected" and even so, I still can't find a real person reporting such an "infection".

 

[hotwire_downunder]

Where is this stuff? I would like to try it on one of my (not currently used) phones.

Thing is, this is nowhere to be found in real world. Only the AV companies have it (or "finds" it, if you please). Normal users have to REALLY screw up their devices in order to get "infected" and even so, I still can't find a real person reporting such an "infection".

Your's is an ignorant and dangerous attitude to have about Anit-Malware.

 

[house70]

Your's is an ignorant and dangerous attitude to have about Anit-Malware.

You have no idea what my attitude is re: anti-malware. I run an AV app on my phone.
You also totally missed my point. My AV app (a very well-known and trusted one, not giving names here but begins with A) has yet to find ANY threat on my devices, despite the fact that I have rooted, enabled developer settings, even allowed installs from outside GPlay on all of them.

Let me explain my point again so you can understand. I find the trend of creating mass hysteria and panic quite annoying and counterproductive, given the extremely small (if any) real world penetration of these malware apps. Back in the day when PCs were starting to get exposure to malware we used to have real world numbers or at least estimates of how many machines were infected with this or that virus. Nowadays the AV companies are losing ground simply because it's become a lot cheaper and more convenient to just replace the infected phone than go through all the trouble of trying to clean it (without losing all the data, which would be tantamount to replacing it). Even so, the real world penetration of these mal-apps is so small, it doesn't even create a blip of the radar, so to speak.

I am fully aware that installing shoddy apps will eventually land one in hot water, but despite what you think, I know exactly how to avoid that and is something called common sense. Just like avoiding opening any attachments from spam email like "Notice of Appearance in Court" that I get in the Spam folder a couple times a day; I don't need an app to tell me that is malware. Besides, if such an app is installed on a phone, what is the AV app going to do about it? Tell the owner "you might have gotten infected, hang on tight while we work on a fix, because we don't have it yet"?

 

[teh_chem]

I laugh at antivirus programs for android devices. Most devices aren't running with root/superuser privileges, so there isn't a whole lot a virus can do in those cases. And even if you have an AV running, if you manually allow something like installation of a 3rd party app/unknown source (which ends up being malware), AV doesn't really have a benefit. And most of the time, those who do root *usually* tend to have the common sense of good user practices.