Android Upgrades Open A Backdoor To Malware, Researchers Show

Dermot7 · Mar 19, 2014

Updating software is to malware as flossing is to gingivitis: a basic practice meant to minimize the risk of infection. But a team of researchers has found that for Google's Android platform, operating system upgrades can also serve as a stealthy new method for malware to sneak its tricks past Android’s security measures.

In a paper they plan to present at the IEEE Security and Privacy symposium in May, a team of researchers from the University of Indiana and Microsoft Research outline a devious new backdoor in Android’s malware protections: It begins when a user is tricked into installing an innocuous-seeming application that asks for few or no permissions to access the phone’s data or use its features. But when the user upgrades to the latest version of Android, the malware app silently upgrades itself, too, gaining new access to the user’s sensitive information or control of other phone functions to access the user’s voicemails, login credentials, text messages, call logs, and more, depending on the version of Android.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...-open-a-backdoor-to-malware-researchers-show/

FreddyFreeloader · Mar 19, 2014

Here's their app to scan for any update vulnerabilities:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iu.seccheck

Noob · Mar 20, 2014

Interesting, changing permissions later down the road.
Didnt think about it.

lotuseclat79 · Mar 22, 2014

Stealth malware sneaks onto Android phones, then “turns evil” when OS upgrades.

-- Tom

SnowFlakes · Mar 23, 2014

How to find this? - How to protect against this ?

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