In principle, the operating system is man-made, man-made and nothing is perfect. This makes the operating system always has a weakness that can be attacked. If there is an operating system with a market share of over 70%, it is very difficult to make people interested to crack and create malware to attack the operating system.
Lord of the biggest market is the green Android robot which incidentally uses the Linux kernel. This operating system is phenomenal because in a few years to master the largest share of the smartphone world and installed on 200 million devices per November 2011. Android is a smartphone operating system is the most sexy and become the number one target for malware authors.
Threatening Financial Transactions
One of the things that motivated the rise of Android virus emergence is financial motivation, more precisely financial transactions via smartphone or mobile. Actual financial transaction using a smartphone consists of some kind. One is the use of NFC (Near Field Communication) is actually the application of RFID technology (Radio Frequency Identification). Examples are Google Wallet NFC application using payWave technology (licensed from VISA).
The implementation of RFID technology is more widely used by banks using chip cards such as BCA or Mandiri Flazz-e-toll card, while the implementation of the smartphone is still very low. This may be because the scope of the smartphone market is more limited than the use of chip cards. In terms of costs, the production costs incurred to make the chip-based cards would be cheaper than to make smartphones.
Android viruses that appear and try to get more financial benefits target mobile banking financial transactions (and not RFID). One possible reason is because the small nominal NFC transactions. This is not surprising since the maximum card balance BCA Flazz is USD 100. Compared with mobile banking attacking bank accounts, accounts that use RFID to be less sexy.
Have Root Privilege
One of the things that has been a strong defensive factor for the Android operating system is the root access facility. If there is a virus that enters the root system without infecting, the virus will find it difficult to spread or carry out the action. The bad news came from China, where apparently now there are two viruses that exploit the Android system that has root privileges.
With this rooting ability of the virus can lead to doing anything like that can be done by the operating system. Both viruses are Cage and Gingermaster.
Development of Android virus very quickly and surprisingly. First discovered in November 2010 by the name of Geinimi (often referred to as the first Android botnet) with limited capabilities. In less than a year (June 2011) virus is available with access to OS root (rooting).
For more details, please see the table below regarding the development of Android virus.
Time names found Capability :
- Geinimi 26 November 2010 the first in Android Botnet
- PjApps December 29, 2010 with the ability to send SMS Bot own
- Bot BaseBridge March 17, 2011 with the ability to call their own
- Legacy June 3, 2011 Bot with rooting ability
- GingerMaster August 18, 2011 the first Android Malware exploit Root on Android OS 2.3 (Gingerbread)
Various modes Virus
After having access to the root, rooting virus indirectly be said to have become "Super Sanya". This is because the virus is capable of doing just about anything that can be done by the operating system. Basically, the technique commonly used by malware Android is a keystroke sniff that works like a trojan on your computer. Simulations performed keypad where malware can send DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency) automatically unnoticed by smartphones.
The third is the ability to conduct wiretaps SMS, It would be very dangerous especially if the intercepted SMS is such an important SMS PIN or internet banking passwords and sensitive data. After the tapping action of SMS, SMS manipulation is performed. As a result, the infected Android smartphones will be used to automatically send SMS to the number specified by the malware authors.
Currently, in order to enroll in premium SMS services already exist provided that this service provider MUST send a SMS to prospective users. To register for the service can not be performed automatically by the content provider, but must manually by the owner of a smartphone with a certain way of sending SMS to the number specified.
With a few simple modifications, virus Android smartphones can be used to enroll the infected to this premium content services without the permission or knowledge of the owner. SMS will be used as one factor in the security of internet banking. A private bank is the neighboring country of origin sending SMS PIN to internet banking account holder.
Another bad news is supposed to be homework (homework) for telecom operators is the ability to forge the identity of sending SMS. So malware can easily send SMS to anywhere with forged sender name her, whether from the operator (Indosat, Telkomsel or XL), Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs though.
Techniques are automatically sending SMS too complicated. Simply by moving SMS to be sent to the "outbox", the SMS will automatically be sent. And no less strange, if there is an SMS saved to "inbox", the system will automatically provide notification that there is an incoming SMS. After reading this article, we encourage you not to directly sell and exchange it with your Android Blackberry.
There are many things that can be done to anticipate this. At this time, the real threat is the ability to forge and send fake SMS or make a phone without the owner smartphones.
Action forge keypad has not been found in Android virus, but it has a lot of virus found in Symbian. So technically this has been shown to exist even different operating systems. And believed in the very near future Android virus with the ability to forge keypad will appear. Hopefully this information can be useful for you and you should always be careful.
