Android Malware, believe the hype.

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…or “Just how much Android malware is there anyway?”

Mobile malware can no longer be ignored!

The security industry has an embarrassing problem. For several years it became a matter of course for the big names in security to warn annually that ‘next year’ was to be the year of mobile malware. “Look out“, we said, “mobile malware, it’s coming…“; but it never did. It remained elusively over the threat horizon. In reality, every year since Cabir in 2004 we have saw appearances and developments in mobile malware (originally for Symbian, J2ME and Windows CE) but it simply never reached critical mass or moved beyond the mischievous.

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New bracelets for ransomware kingpin

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Image courtesy of .v1ctor. on Flickr

I’m happy to say that, as a result of close cooperation between Trend Micro threat research and Spanish law enforcement a number of important arrests have been made in connection with the Reveton ransomware. The Spanish police announcement can be found here [Spanish].

Over the past several months Trend Micro researchers have been providing evidence and intelligence related to the Reveton ransomware or “police trojan”. Law enforcement in Spain first became interested in this malware as a result of complaints they were receiving from victims of the scam. Trend Micro and Spanish law enforcement agencies have collaborated extremely closely; sharing intelligence, sharing samples and related technical detail. As a direct result of activities carried out by Trend Micro threat research, they were able to map the criminal network infrastructure including traffic redirection and command and control servers. Some of the intelligence gathered by law enforcement enabled them to reach a high degree of certainty of the identity of one of the individuals at the very top of this criminal gang.
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WhatsApp in violation of privacy law.

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Some very sensitive communications

Some very sensitive communications happen over WhatsApp

WhatsApp Inc. the company behind the hugely successful cross (mobile) platform messaging app have been hauled over the coals subsequent to a joint investigation by the Dutch Data Protection Authority and The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Their joint news release from the 28th January finds that WhatsApp is guilty of

“violating certain internationally accepted privacy principles, mainly in relation to the retention, safeguard, and disclosure of personal data“.

These findings reinforce the conclusions that David Sancho came to last year when researching the security of mobile apps, and also the conclusions of a recently released Ponemon study into data privacy

The investigation ran over several months and resulted in three key findings, two of the issues have already been substantially resolved by WhatsApp Inc. but a third remains outstanding.
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