Till now we had only heard of botnets on PCs that usually spam us from hacked email accounts from unknown places. But now they have gone mobile. Terry Zink, Microsoft researcher claims that he has discovered evidence against an illegal botnet has hijacked smartphones running on Google’s Android operating system and used them to send spam from users’ Yahoo email accounts.

Android has already suffered from security problems earlier. Mostly from Google Play where botnets disguised as popular apps (or pirates free versions of paid apps). Such apps are installed voluntarily by the user and then they infiltrate with the security of their Android smart phones. But Zink says that this is the first time ever when they have seen a major botnet living on Android devices.

Zink reported that the IP addresses used to sapm were from Android devices in Chile, Indonesia, Lebanon, Oman, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Zink noted that the data showed that users in the developing countries don’t bother about online security that much as compared to users in developed countries.

Zink Wrote At MSDN: “This ups the ante for spam filters.  If people download malicious apps onto their phone that capture keystrokes for their email software, it makes it way easier for spammers to send abusive mail.  This is the next evolution in the cat-and-mouse game that is email security.”

Source: popsci.com

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