Android virus does voice recordings on the quiet

Who says that phones are safe enough to use that there is no need for anti-virus software? That might be true in the older days before color displays and Internet connectivity on the handset became the norm, but now, we have mobile operating systems that do resemble that of a PC in many ways, hence opening up some of the same doors as well to external threats. There is word of a virus which targets Android-powered devices which is touted to be able to covertly record phone conversations. Security researchers at CA Technologies stumbled upon this Trojan which has call recording functionality – making it far more threatening compared to earlier viruses that logged information (phone numbers and call duration) at best.

According to CA’s Dinesh Venkatesan who ran the Trojan via an emulator, he observed that users are tricked into installing the virus via an approval prompt which will look as though the smartphone was asking for your permission via mimicry, loading itself when you give the go ahead while adding a remote server configuration file.

Whenever you make a phone call, the Trojan will ensure every word is saved to an AMR file onto the handset’s SD memory card, so if you tend to make a lot of calls, you might be surprised to see that your SD memory card fills up real fast. There is also the possibility of the remote server files uploading your recorded conversations to the attackers at their beck and call.

Better safe than sorry, so make sure you know where you’re downloading your files from!

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, android apps, trojan, virus