A recent study from the NC State University revealed that there is a new malware vulnerability to the most popular mobile operating system today – Android. The devices that are included in the threat are those running on Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean. By the way, if you’re not aware what ‘SMSishing’ is, it’s a way of phishing through SMS.
Google has already confirmed this vulnerability and they are now working on a fix to address it on future Android updates. The Xuxian Jiang’s research team from the NC State University said that a user may be infected if they would download a malicious app. If ever they got one, it will then trigger its bad moves by sending an SMS to the user which can be mistaken because it can “appear that the user has received an SMS, or text, message from someone on the phone’s contact list or from trusted banks”. This way, a user might be urged to give important details such as passwords and the like.
While waiting for Google to address the problem, the team of researchers will not release the details of their findings for security reasons. Android users are now advised to be more careful on choosing which apps to use as well as keeping an eye on the text messages they receive. According to a previous report, Android malwares are growing at a fast rate so everyone is encouraged to take the extra steps to secure our privacy.
[Source: NC State University]