Malware Infects Memory Cards of 3,000 Vodafone Mobiles
Jeremy Kirk writes on ComputerWorld:
Malware-tainted memory cards may have ended up on as many as 3,000 HTC Magic phones, a greater number than first suspected, Vodafone said today.More here.
The problem came to light earlier this month after an employee of Panda Security plugged a newly ordered phone into a Windows computer, where it triggered an alert from the antivirus software.
Further inspection of the phone found the device's 8GB microSD memory card was infected with a client for the now-defunct Mariposa botnet, the Conficker worm and a password stealer for the Lineage game.
Vodafone said it was an isolated incident, but an employee at Spanish security company S21sec discovered another phone with an infected card, which it sent to Panda. That phone was purchased directly from Vodafone's Web site in the same week as the first phone, according to Panda.
It is unclear how the batch of memory cards became infected and an investigation is under way, said a spokesman for Vodafone in Spain. There are no problems with either the HTC Magic phone or its Android OS. The malware only affected phones sold in Spain.
posted by Fergie @ 3/19/2010 09:21:00 AM
2 Comments:
Bunnie Huang had a post about counterfeit memory chips; if I had to place a dollars vs. donuts bet it would be that the memory cards were counterfeited.
This suggests an extremely scary infection vector for consumer devices, especially if memory components are not routinely put through QA testing by the OEM before being shipped to consumers.
didnt this happen to a Nokia phone also at one time? They had to reship new sd cards for them because of a defective one with some type of virus.
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