“Cyber-thieves are using games including Angry Birds to turn Android phones into spam-sending drones,” BBC News reports. “Phones have been infected with spam-forwarding software that hid inside free versions of popular Android games. Once installed, the booby-trapped app contacts a web server for a list of phone numbers then starts sending junk text messages to them.”
“Angry Birds Space, Need for Speed Most Wanted and many other games have been used in the attack,” The Beeb reports. “The first stage of the campaign to recruit phones to act as spam relays. It involved sending out thousands of messages supposedly offering people free versions of popular Android games, said network security firm Cloudmark in an analysis of the SpamSoldier attack.”
“The copies of the games were held on a server in China rather than on the main Google Play store, it said. After the app is downloaded users must disable some safeguards, grant the app permission to install and give it the ability to browse the web or send texts messages before it will run,” The Beeb reports. “Once installed the app removes its icon from a phone’s main screen and then contacts a central server for a list of target phone numbers. It then starts sending out spam messages in a bid to trick more people into downloading and installing the rogue app.”
The Beeb reports, “Cloudmark said whoever was behind the attack had recently ramped up their use of it. Now, it said, it was seeing more than 500,000 junk texts per day being sent through infected Android phones.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Android is “open” in all the wrong ways.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Indiemuppet” for the heads up.]
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