Only in China: Ugly Android Trojan in the Wild Again
AegisLab reports they discovered an Android trojan which they dubbed ADRD. The writer tucked it into some wallpaper apps found in a Chinese third partry application store (the last place you’d expect, right?). What the thing does if you sideload it is phone home your IMEI to adrd.taxuan.net, an apparent Microsoft machine in Wuhan, China (surprise) with twenty ports open including Tor, and awaits commands, effectively establishing an Android device botnet for an unknown purpose.
Meanwhile, the Chinese host instructs the infected device to various Chinese URLs including Baidu search strings. AegisLab describes the bandwidth consumption and nature of the virus as being of “lower profile” than a trojan from last year but that it nonetheless consumes bandwidth which depending on how much bandwidth it uses and what quota situation someone may be in with their carrier, it may cost people money and has the potential to do other things. AegisLab suspects the purpose of prompting these search queries is for SEO purposes of all things on Baidu, also Chinese and known for being in cahoots with the Chinese government for large scale attacks on American tech companies including incidents of international corporate espionage in addition to sabotage according to US State Department sources. It was in the Times.
To protect yourself, as with the other Android “viruses,” just move along and keep doing your thing unless your thing includes downloading and executing software from random Chinese servers. I’ll go out on a limb here and call that a dumb idea to do with anything involving software unless you’re trying to illustrate a valid point about the Chinese.
And no, don’t try to spin this, AegisLab is not Chinese. They’re Taiwanese.
Doug Simmons
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About The Author
Doug Simmons
Biographical info.. hmm. I have a history of not being able to strike the balance between what is "safe" to put into these forms and what is, in my mind at least, funny. Can't do it.
Is it just me or is this article reveals the hidden racist side of the author? And I’m not referring to the racism he displays (quite childishly) against ‘rival’ tech platforms/ecosystems
Need I remind that feelings of racism emnate from suspicions about own capability, notions of inadequacy, inferiority complex vís-a-vís the target race/community and subconcious(but mostly unfounded) fear of being usurped/wiped out/bested by a percieved rival. Truely superior entities do not need to feed off the follies and weakness of others. This, at best, is a function of scavengers, which is the closest comparision to racists I can see in nature. Maybe the author should introspect/get professional help to determine the root cause for his racism. And while at it, maybe he should also try to search for an example when the Chinese, for example, indulged in racism. Maybe the oriental ‘race’ doesn’t need to or maybe they believe in Facta Non Verba, which is an ancient occidental phrase.
I don’t have proof, this way or that, about web attacks on western ‘assets’ emnating from Chinese soil except the opinion of some western diplomats leaked by a recently famous website and I suspect neither does the author. Nevertheless, I find it rather náíve on his part to defend piracy of music in one post and deride webattacks on another. I also suspect that if his ‘chosen’ tech-platform were strong enough they would have made themselves impenetrable to trojans, which, by the way, is a classic example of how a percieved (false) sense of superiority is exploited by a rival and ironically, rabid racism too results in such misplaced vanity.
Please pardon the incorrect use of italics in the above piece ( and this ), as I am yet to learn how to use HTML tags and attributes.
and bold letters…
P.S. – Mobility Digest, where is the “Edit” button?
Hidden? Heh.. I guess you haven’t read too many of my other hacking bits.
How about this — in exchange for cleaning up your HTML you copy/paste this post of mine where I defend piracy. Good?
By the way, your English is exceptional … for a Southern Asian. Spy on any Blackberry communication today in the name of defending your people from a situation I can’t fully appreciate? Step in any human shit today?
Not to mention your French and Latin. You know Freud too! And how to make those foreign-looking letters! If you can write that intelligently maybe you’ve got a good point about my rabid racism, naiveness, insecurities of multiple forms, susceptibility to brainwashing or whatever you meant by putting apostrophes around the word chosen, my vanity, scavenging proclivities, sense of superiority, wow I’m losing track. Guess I’d better do some soul searching.
By the way do you think I don’t care for the Japanese too? South Koreans? The Chinese for that matter, you truly think I don’t like Chinese or are you doing schtick with me? And if so are we talking mainland Chinese only, whom I hate, or do you think I don’t feel refreshed when I cross over into Macau and Hong Kong? Why are you clumping all these orientals together? So many different types with so many different things to hate other than web attacks!
Speaking of that word, oriental, you ever stay at the Mandarin Oriental? Holy cow, even in a shithole like Jakarta (now that is a thing I truly do hate), they know how to deliver the full package like it’s nobody’s business. Too bad the massage girls are too professional there… gotta stick to Chinatown for that type of professionalism!
Fact is buddy you don’t know shit about me yet you’ve drawn more conclusions than I have all week and you think there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re more convinced of everything you said about me, things that only have a shot of being mitigated by a head shrink, than you are of whether or not these web attacks took place.
Facta non verba, sounds like a great way to go about one’s business. Not sure how that works out with blogging though. What are you suppose to do at this point, imagine to yourself that I’m aiming my middle finger at the monitor now in order for me to get my point across?
In this country we say speak softly but carry a big stick, and when we do that the person on the listening side of the conversation knows what the other guy is saying even if we don’t live on Park Avenue and we don’t feel like the Harvard Law guy wants to iron in that he’s in a higher social caste than we are, showing off with his ancient occidental crap.
By the way, name a phone platform that, when you disable the default option not to install anything from a source other than Google and instead subscribe to a third party app market maintained in another country and download executable wallpaper apps safely. Right, you got nothing; I went rhetorical on you. Me, I like to steer in any direction (with the engine at any RPM) with that anti-sideloading setting capable of being turned off but if I want to change into slot car mode, I’ve got that option. All the other cars have those electric seatbelts or the really annoying pinging sound until you buckle up — no thanks.
PS: Take your intellect, the edit button you don’t have and your hotmail alias and shove them up your ass. And do let us know if you’re interested in writing for this site. Whole lot of racism and ignorance for you to offset… plus you get the edit buttons.
Doug, eh tough guy, it does take some provocation to get you to write a good piece of shit which is highly enjoyable even if it doesn’t mean shit in the end. Now that’s an art I gotta learn from ya. Only wish you were Devil’s Advocate on Redmond’s side as there would’ve been regular instigations in your chosen profession(talk of occupational hazards) and, hopefully, frequent flashes of brilliance. Keep up the good work, dude, and I’ll keep needling you on non-tech issues whenever you choose to see countries, races or communities thru a colored lens over a cyclops eye, coz I ain’t no tech guy which kinda disqualifies me from writing for this site.
O yea, I always thought the word was naïveté, but I looked up the dictionary and bingo, there it was – naiveness. Man, you guys made English so simple there ain’t much fun in it no more!! (and naïveté wasn’t even English to begin with).
P.S. – Who’s ahidin’? I thought I’d just show you a nifty feature of hotmail. I even left clues for you to recognise me without the need to hack. 🙂