Chris Brook

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"Distrust and caution are the parents of security" - Benjamin Franklin

NQ Mobile: Android Malware Doubled in 2012

Throw another log onto the proverbial Android malware fire: According to mobile security firm NQ Mobile, infections targeting devices running the Google-based operating system doubled in 2012. That translates to a 163 percent increase from 2011 and accounts for over 65,000 different types of malware discovered, up 30,000 from 25,000 the year before.


A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability exists in the browser version of AirDroid, a cloud management application for Google’s Android phones. According to an alert from the US-Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), at the current time, there is no patch planned and there is no logical workaround.

UPDATE Popular applications Skype and Dropbox fixed holes in their websites this week that could have allowed an attacker to gain control of users’ Facebook accounts. In what’s technically being referred to as an “open direct vulnerability,” both applications failed to validate sites before sending users and their access tokens to them.