back to article Android Trojan distracts Japanese with anime and porn

Security experts are warning of yet more malicious applications found on Google’s official online apps market Play, this time designed to steal personal data in the background while promising to show trailers for Japanese anime, video games and porn. McAfee malware researcher Carlos Castillo explained in a blog post that the …

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  1. Khaptain Silver badge

    No a trojan

    Wouldn't it be more correct to call this Malware rather than a trojan ?

    In my book a trojan is a program designed to give control of your machine to a 3rd party in one way or another but definately not just to steal personal data.

    There must be literally thousands of apps that request access to the Phonebook and each obviously has the potential to do the same thing : ie steal your contact information. So whats new here.

    Mcafee - Lets be honest this is a report coming from someone with a vested interest.

    1. phear46

      Re: No a trojan

      Surely the term trojan comes from the fact it is dressed as a normal piece of software, with something quite nasty hidden inside.

      The payload doesn't matter.

  2. adrian sietsma
    FAIL

    The Android trojan scene is made much worse by Google's landgrab for all permissions on all apps. I have a growing list of useful apps which I refuse to update, because of their insistence on needing _far_ too many permissions. And Google leads the pack.

    Why does the current release of Google Maps need to be able to make phone calls - what do I gain from this ?

    Why do 90% of apps want access to my contacts ? I can see what _they_ might get out of hoovering up my address book, but why should I let them ?

    Google are rapidly going downhill in my estimation : now only a tiny bit less evil than the other two.

    1. frank ly

      The really suspicious ones are the 'attractive' and free analgue clock widgets that want full internet access, ability to send and receive SMS, read phone state and some other stuff. Big WTF! on those.

      The only 'Contacts' on my phone are the ones that the SIM card forces on me. I use Colornote to mantain lists of contacts and have widgets for family, friends, work, etc; which works great with Android's built in ability to recognise text that is a phone number or e-mail address, highlight it and action it with a single touch. That way, you get to decide upon and layout the contact information in a way that looks good and is useful to you. (This will work with Evernote and just about any text file app).

      The only disadvatage is that I can't tell who is phoning me unless I recognise the number, but that doesn't bother me.

      I have considered rooting my phone so I can use a fine grained permissions blocking app, but that's technically a bit too much of a step fopr me.

    2. Elmer Phud
      Meh

      Trojans and Google etc

      There was a recent bit of news that the bulk of iPad apps being downloaded are basically for the under ten year olds - iPads being the new babysitters, apparently - just wipe the jam and snot off each time.

      Android is obviously is aimed at a more responsible age group where no-one is tempted by bright shiny things that promise so much in return for so little.

      Boy and toys, eh.

    3. Richard Ball

      less evil?

      Is it still less evil? As a person who carries no i-thing, nor any of the other likely-looking shiny devices, I believe I don't have any hidden allegiance.

      Now, if I ever do get myself such a device I think I'm going to give my money to the people who charge you directly when you purchase, who sell you a pretty good product, and who run a fairly-secure, fairly-closed system.

      As opposed to the people who farm their customers as a source of advertising to sell to the lowest bidder. We all know that they sell the devices and software to make money, and I'd rather pay them myself than have some stragers pay them to steal my data.

      (btw I won't be buying media from anyone.)

    4. Argh

      > Why does the current release of Google Maps need to be able to make phone calls - what do I gain from this ?

      Surely Google Maps needs to be able to call numbers because when you've found what you're looking for (hotel, etc.), you can call it?

      I've certainly used this functionality before and it seems quite an obvious requirement.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Devil's advocate....

      "Why does the current release of Google Maps need to be able to make phone calls - what do I gain from this ?"

      Translating the use case scenario to English:

      You: Maps, locate nearest seller of $THINGS

      Maps: Here are the 3 nearest sellers of $THINGS.

      You: That one - tell me about it.

      Maps: Here they are. Here's the reviews. Says call for hours. Here's their phone number. You want to call it?

      You: Yes.

      Maps: (dials number).

      So there is a valid reason Maps might need to dial a number for you.

      Of course, that leaves about 9 million apps that want to access to everything for no good reason.

  3. P. Lee
    Facepalm

    Stop with the Apps!

    Why is anyone surprised that free stuff comes with a hidden agenda?

    Why not just stick with the reasonable apps from sites you trust? You don't need another soduku or word game. The railway timetable app is one thing, but an "Unlock Angry Birds Levels" app is never going to be a good idea.

    He who downloads the most free stuff does not win!

    And stay away from porn purveyors. That's good advice anywhere.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stop with the Apps!

      And what guarantee's do we have / get that the paid counterpart doesn't do exactly the same thing?

  4. Chris Sake
    WTF?

    Double take

    I read the headline as meaning that tojans are now required in bukkake film.

    LBE Privacy Guard is a useful tool to tame use of over-eager permissions in Android applications. Rooting is required.

    1. Chris Sake

      Edit

      Trojan, not tojan.

    2. Doogie1
      Coat

      Re: Double take

      "LBE Privacy Guard is a useful tool to tame use of over-eager permissions in Android applications. Rooting is required."

      Not only rooting, you also need to trust that LBE Privacy Guard isn't doing anything malicious and that the version of LBE Privacy Guard you have is a proper one.

      1. Chris Sake

        Re: Double take

        Good point. The author is active on xda, but most users of Play Store, or whatever it is called this week, would have to rely on that old quis...custodes thing.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Someone has too...

    Pictures or it didn't happen!

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Matt 4
      Thumb Down

      Re: ...anime AND porn?

      before talking have some idea of what you're talking about

      http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=main

      This season alone there are 61 new Anime (seasons / movies and OVA) that aren't Hentai.

      These range from shows about cooking and, panda's running cafes to adult shows like fate/zero and Sankarae, also slice of life shows, comedies, ecchi shows, moe shows, shounen shows, shoujo shows, mysteries, action, horror, romance, giant robot and a whole draft of other kinds of shows.

      Your comment is much like going

      Live action shows and porn? There's a difference?

      Which is equally retarded.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    /r/ pic

  8. Graham Bartlett

    Hentai

    Those Japanese, eh? When you're looking at anime and you invite that tentacle into your home, you never quite know where it's going to end up...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you know what is good for you.

    You will show that tentacle your back door as soon as you can.

  10. Lallabalalla
    FAIL

    But open is better...

    ..right?

  11. RyokuMas
    Trollface

    Articles like this...

    ... make me think of all the troll comments that pop up on every WinPhone7 article, then look at my Lumia 800 and smile...

    Troll - because turnabout play is fair.

    1. Spearchucker Jones
      Trollface

      Re: Articles like this...

      Ain't that the truth!

      Read the first comment on here and wondered why the naming semantics of the thing were even worth bothering with - malicious is malicious, and WP7 has no malicious anything I'm aware of.

      Sweet :-)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: Articles like this...

        For WP7 to have anything malicious it would need to have apps, and to have enough users to grant the effort to develop for it...

        And yes, I have a Lumia 800 too. I just don't use it as anything else than a hyped up feature phone. At least now there seems to be a unlocked bootloader, soon we might even be able to run something else than WP7.5 on it!

      2. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Articles like this...

        It's simple really,

        Malware is in general not very destructive it's usually annoying.. ( This is an example)

        Trojans on the other hand can be extremely destructive depending on their nature.

        Not all payloads have the same effect. Someone stealing your personal information is one thing, someone modifiying/destroying information or taking complete control is another.

        This article was another of those "scary" ones where we are supposed to rush out and buy and AntiVirus solution in order to protect ourselves. Complete bullshit - you protect yourself by not downloading apps that can't be trusted and if none can be found then tough luck don't use any at all..

        Semantics really does give us something to bother about.

        1. Spearchucker Jones

          Re: Articles like this...

          Maybe semantics matter to tecchies. The average man in the street couldn't care less.

          My mom, a friend and an ex :-O have all asked me why they're hearing about "so many viruses" on Android.

          1. Khaptain Silver badge

            Re: Articles like this...

            >The average man in the street couldn't care less.

            This is probably very true but then again we are reading this article on a "Techie" website and the majority of readers here are "techies" of some sort or the other who know that in the world of IT, "semantics" are extremely import.

        2. Galidron
          Flame

          Malware

          Payload is irrelevant. Malware is a term to that includes all malicious software, weather it be trojan, virus, worm, or spyware. Everything that is a trojan is malware, but not everything that is malware is a trojan.

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