A Malware has infected Android mobile phones sending spam
emails, a security researcher said earlier this week.
Microsoft security engineer Terry Zink said the malware has
infected phones of users' Yahoo email accounts to send out
spam messages.
"We've all heard the rumors, but this is the first time I
have seen it -- a spammer has control of a botnet that
lives on Android devices," Zink said in a
blog post
Tuesday.
"These devices login to the user's Yahoo Mail account and
send spam."
He added the phones appear to be located in Chile,
Indonesia, Lebanon, Oman, Philippines, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
"I've written in the past that Android has the most malware
compared to other smartphone platforms, but your odds of
downloading and installing a malicious Android app is
pretty low if you get it from the Android Marketplace," he
said.
"But if you get it from some guy in a back alley on the
Internet, the odds go way up."
He added that users in the developed world "usually have
better security practices and fewer malware infections than
users in the developing world."
"I am betting that the users of those phones downloaded
some malicious Android app in order to avoid paying for a
legitimate version and they got more than they bargained
for," Zink said.
"Either that or they acquired a rogue Yahoo Mail app."