Android plagued with malware

Android smartphones rock, but whether you use Avast, Lookout, the new Sophos, or another freebie antivirus/security app, you better lock and load to protect your Android before you become a victim and a stat.

Android, once dubbed a “cyber menace,” is too popular, too juicy and potentially too lucrative of a target for malware writers to ignore. In fact, a new F-Secure report suggests malware writers are getting craftier by creating trojanized apps that can defeat anti-virus detection. F-Secure released its latest mobile threat report [PDF] concerning the first quarter of 2012 and Android malware has grown exponentially. Since a year ago, the number of new malware variants have quadrupled and the number of malicious Android application package files (APKs) had a “staggering” increase of “139 to 3063 counts.”

Facebook target of malware campaign

A new fraud campaign aims to separate users of Facebook, Google Mail, Hotmail, and Yahoo from their debit card data.
We’ve recently discovered a series of attacks being carried out by a P2P variant of the Zeus platform against some of the Internet’s leading online services and websites.

The Facebook scam offers people a 20% discount if they link their Visa or MasterCard details to their Facebook account. “The scam claims that after registering their card information, the victim will earn cash back when they purchase Facebook points,” said Klein. A fake Web form then requests that the user enter their debit card number, its expiration date, as well as their security code and PIN.

In the Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo variations, the scam “offers an allegedly new way of authenticating to the 3D Secure service offered by the Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode programs,” said Klein. In particular, the scam suggests that Google and Yahoo users can tie the 3D Secure password issued by their bank to, respectively, their Google Checkout and Yahoo Checkout accounts. It then requests the person’s debit card number, expiration date, security code, and 3D Secure PIN code. For Hotmail users, attackers have tweaked the language slightly to suggest that without the 3D Secure code being entered, users won’t be able to use Hotmail to make any purchases.

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