Viruses & Malware

T-Mobile is aiming to fortify the Android smartphones and tablets it carries by offering users free protection against malware and viruses.

The company announced today that it is partnering with mobile security company Lookout to help T-Mobile customers protect their devices with a product called Automatic App Security. The software will come preloaded on certain devices this year, and then T-Mobile will roll it out to most Android devices in 2013.

Android applications downloaded by as many as 185 million users can expose end users' online banking and social networking credentials, e-mail and instant-messaging contents because the programs use inadequate encryption protections, computer scientists have found.

Code writers behind the latest Citadel trojan, dubbed the "Rain Edition," have added advanced features and significantly boosted the price tag of the malware.

The new iteration includes a feature, called "Dynamic Config," which allows botmasters easier access to compromised victims' machines by updating the malware's configuration file immediately. Configuration files are used by owners of command-and-control servers to communicate malicious instructions to hacked PCs under their control.

A growing army of malware delivery networks – ‘malnets’ – account for two thirds of all cyberattacks and most current technologies offer an inadequate response to the threat, security firm Blue Coat has argued in a new analysis.

Malnets are networks of compromised servers used to serve malware to PCs users either via tempting them to click on infected links or via drive-by clicks baited through Internet search. The technique is an old one but what is perhaps new is the automation being used to turn them into large, self-sustaining networks.

Researchers have created a proof-of-concept Android malware app that is able to use the phone's sensors and camera to gather data that can be used to surreptitiously create a 3D model of a room. The research paperPDF from Robert Templeman of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indiana and Zahid Rahman, David Crandall and Apu Kapadia of the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University discusses an Android app they created called PlaceRaider.

A click-fraud campaign – in which attackers redirect users from legitimate ads on major sites, like Facebook and YouTube, to URLs where they can receive money for clicks – has been launched using a new TDL-4 malware variant.

TDL-4 rose to infamy in 2011, when researchers discovered that the malware supported a botnet of more than four million infected computers, which were primarily in the United States.

There's been a lot of news lately on how Android mobile devices are malware's new favorite victims. While Google has been working to beef up security for its mobile OS, wireless carriers are also pitching in.

Verizon announced the launch of its McAfee "Mobile Security" app for Android today, which aims to help subscribers protect stored data on their smartphones. More specifically the paid version of the app lets users remotely locate, alarm, lock, and wipe data from their device.

A new variant of the revived Pushdo trojan has infected more than 100,000 computers since the beginning of August, and it's using a new technique to trip up researchers trying to study the botnet.

Symantec has released a new warning after finding that an updated variant of malware Shamoon is in the wild. The new version -- detected by the company as W32.Disttrack -- wipes and destroys files as well as the master boot record (MBR) and changing the active partitions of an infected machine.

The online world is under siege. Computers, laptops, and mobile devices are increasingly being attacked by worms, viruses, botnets, Trojans, spam, and more.

According to a new report by McAfee (PDF), Malware is multiplying at a faster pace now than any other time in the last four years. There has been a 1.5 million increase in malware over last quarter, along with growth of newer threats, including "ransomware" attacks, thumb drive corrupters, and botnets.