“When Panda Security found malware on a brand new Android-based Vodafone HTC Magic earlier this month, Vodafone said it was an ‘isolated local incident,’” Elinor Mills reports for CNET.
“Now, a second phone has been found harboring malware, including a program that turns infected machines into zombies as part of the Mariposa credit card and bank log-in-stealing botnet, according to Spain-based PandaLabs,” Mills reports. “After hearing about PandaLabs’ discovery, an employee at another Spanish security company, S21Sec, checked his recently-acquired HTC Magic and found the Mariposa malware lurking on it.”
Mills reports, “PandaLabs connected the S21Sec employee’s microSD card to his PC and found that the smartphone was loaded with the malware on March 1, more than a week before he had received the phone from Vodafone.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Again: Ah, the joys of an “open” (sort of) platform. By the way, there are currently tens of millions more iPhone OS devices than there are Android devices in the world today, yet Android is the one that’s infected. The “security via obscurity” argument fails yet again.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Richard V." for the heads up.]
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