The name “Steve Jobs” evokes a passionate response from many people, myself included. No matter what your feelings are however, there is little doubt that the world has lost a true visionary.
Steve Jobs shaped Apple as we know it today and under his guidance they created some of the most iconic technology products of our era. Steve Jobs was also responsible for business plan innovation that turned industries like the mobile phone industry completely on it’s head.
RIP Steve Jobs, no matter what I thought of some of your ideas, you were an icon that changed the world around you.
For some time now we have been predicting that the next evolution in smartphone malware will be for this type of malware to move closer to parity with traditional desktop malware. This has now been confirmed by Trend Micro who have found a varient of Malware – ANDROIDOS_ANDROIDSERVERBOT.A apparently originating from China that masquerades as an e-book reader app. Once on an infected device this malware uses an internet Blog site as its Command and Control server, joining infected devices into an army of zombie smartphones:
Permissions requested by ANDROIDOS_ANSERVERBOT.A
“From our analysis, we found that this malware has two hardcoded C&C servers to which it connects in order to receive commands and to deliver payloads. The first server is just like the usual remote site to which the malware posts information to and gets commands from. The second C&C server, however, caught our attention more. This is a blog site with encrypted content, which based on our research, is the first time Android malware implemented this kind of technique to communicate.”
In an additional element of parity, this Malware also has the capability to disable on device security software, terminating the following chinese security apps:
Smartphones are full computing platforms. This latest threat evolution was entirely predictable yet in my view very little is being done at the consumer end or even at the telco end to protect against the impact this sort of infection could represent.
Just imagine an army of millions of infected phones all calling premium rate numbers or sending out spam emails….
Marc Rogers has worked in information security management for more than 15 years including 10 years Managing Security in companies such as the developer Skylan Group and global telecoms companies such as Vodafone, the worlds largest mobile telecoms operator.
sees himself as a Security Evangelist who has a positive outlook on how security should be implemented in todays global organisations. It is this outlook that Marc used when he helped put together the long running award winning BBC series “The Real Hustle”. Marc Rogers lives in America with his wife Alissa Rogers and his three daughters.
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