Friday, February 24, 2012

Smartphone viruses & trojan horses


A friend spammed me yesterday because "his account was hacked". I doubt that someone spent a bunch of time manually guessing his password. If he is lucky it is an email-initiating virus, but I would not be surprised if his PC has a trojan horse quietly logging his keystrokes every time it detects an SSL connection being established. It bundles the information up and sends it somewhere to be automatically analyzed and then another computer attempts to access the site. If success happens, then someone starts to see what can be accessed. What else may he have lost and how long before the same folks find a way into his bank account?

Today I also read an LA Times article about smartphone hacking which makes me happy the problem would seem to be for Android and Apple users not my BlackBerry.

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