Richard

Android Anti-Malware Software Not Catching Malware

It isn’t a good time to be a user of Android. Not only is Google being sued by two separated individuals (one for invasion of privacy on his phone after Google’s new ‘privacy’ policy, the other for being caught by a Google camera for Streetview while urinating in his garden), it is also being sued by BT, Microsoft and Apple. Not only is the search giant itself constantly plagued with trouble, so too is its mobile operating system Android.

It’s no secret that Android has more than its fair share of malware and ‘trouble’ apps in its Market – giving a bad name to open-source software, although in reality it’s nothing to do with Android being open-source (which can be only be claimed in the most tenuous way) but Google’s “we don’t really give a shit, we’re only in it for the advertising anyway” approach.

Users concerned about rogue apps would install one of the various anti-malware apps available in the same way PC users install anti-virus. But recent tests found that two-thirds of the anti-malware scanners available for Android aren’t up to the job, including Comodo, McAfee, NetQin and Bullguard.

AV-Test put 41 separate malware scanners through testing, and almost two-thirds (66%) are unreliable and not to be trusted to do their job. How unreliable? Of the 618 types of malware tested, the scanners picked up less than 65%. The ones that are up to the job are the professional packages that we expect to work, and they caught over 90% of the Android malware that they were exposed to – Dr Web, Lookout, Zoner, Kaspersky, Ikarus, F-Secure and Avast.

There were also those products that scored better than 65% but less than 90%, and again these are names we expect to do well catching malware – AVG, ESET, Norton/Symantec and Webroot among them.

In addition to that, there were some that scored less than 40%, and while none of them are from recognised software makers, most of them failed to acknowledge that a week-known Trojan had been opened, let alone finding anything during a routine scan.

The problem with these results is the sheer amount of malware targeting Android, and thus its large amount of users. According to AV-Test there were over 11,000 different types of Android malware, and to give a context of how quickly that number has appeared, there were only 2,000 at the end of October 2011. The malware includes phishing and banking Trojans, spyware, SMS fraud Trojans, fake installers and premium diallers, and with it all lurking in the Market, the very least you want (if not a new operating system) is a reliable anti-malware scanner.

As if it isn’t enough that Google can’t even keep track of what’s entering its Market, it appears it can’t even be trusted to properly code its own software, as it is revealed that there is a weakness in Android phones that makes it possible for attackers to record phone calls secretly, monitor location data and gain access to other private data – without the user even knowing.

According to a paper written by researchers from the North Caroline State University, Android phones by HTC, Samsung, Motorola and Google contain code that grant powerful capabilities to apps that are not trusted, and that the “explicit capability leaks” circumvent key security defences Android has that require users to give permission to apps to access personal information and functions, such as location and text messages. Part of Android’s appeal is its customisation and that the hardware vendors can add their own ‘skin’ and services to the basic model provided by Google, yet it is these very customisations that make the weakness possible. The researchers stated that, “We believe these results demonstrate that capability leaks constitute a tangible security weakness for many Android smartphones in the market today…Particularly, smartphones with pre-loaded apps tend to be more likely to have explicit capability leaks.”

The researchers’ tests found that the HTC EVO 4G was the most vulnerable, leaking eight functions that include text messages, audio recorded and precise geographic location finder. The second most vulnerable was the HTC Legend with six leaks – making HTC a particular manufacturer to avoid. The Samsung Epic 4G has three leaks, including the ability to clear applications and data from the phone. Part of the problem is that the Android Market does not perform any security checks on the applications that come pre-bundled with certain phones; Google’s way to deal with this was the permission-based security model – where users have to agree to an app’s wants and needs before it runs for the first time. However, the enhancements supplied by the manufacturers offer a way to get around this security feature. According to the researchers, Google and Motorola (now owned by Google), have confirmed these vulnerabilities. By contrast, HTC and Samsung “have been really slow in responding to, if not ignoring, our reports/inquiries.”

The researchers who found this problem are the same ones that found other security vulnerabilities in Android, including the presence of at least twelve malicious apps in the Market. The apps, which stole data, remained in the Market for months and were downloaded hundreds of thousands of times before they were removed, which only happened after the researchers informed Google.

Are these concerns over privacy reason enough to avoid Android?

Bieber’s Mum To Release Tell-All Book About Her Superstar Son

Apparently there just isn’t enough Justin Bieber news in the world already – the videos, songs, pictures, stories and books that adorn every facet of stores and Twitter fall short of the cravings of preteens the world over. With this in mind, Bieber’s mother Pattie Mallette has apparently signed a deal with Revell Books to release the currently titled Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber’s Mom, due on September 18. The story reportedly explains her role in turning her offspring from regular Canadian youth into the world’s most famous (and perhaps annoying) teen on the planet.

The main curiosity is knowing just what can be said in a tell-all book about a person who is barely eighteen years of age. Aside from tedious stories about his romantic life with Selena Gomez, even the press has a hard time delving into his private life; and with his mother as his chaperone, how much can there be to tell? Maybe if he’d accepted Slash’s invite to a strip club the book could have a juicy chapter or two.

To make sure no one accuses her of just cashing in on her son’s success though, the book will also detail her own personal trauma, which includes the “abuse and addiction” she suffered in her youth, as well as her attempted suicide at the age of seventeen. As with all such memoirs, she told told Billboard.com that she wants the book to inspire anyone who faces similar hardships (although the cynics among us may well claim that such people are unlikely to be fans of Bieber and thus unlikely to read the book): “I want them to see that no matter how desperate their circumstances may be, they can have hope for a better future.” To prove her dedication to inspiring others, part of any profits from the book will be donated to charity.

Of course, with her son a literary genius it comes as no surprise that Justin will get credited not only in the text but in the crafting of the book too, as he will be contributing the foreword.

Aside from recording, touring, writing the foreword to his mother’s book and courting controversy in the media, Justin will be following up the success of his existing book (First Step 2 Forever: My Story, published in 2010) with Justin Bieber: Just Getting Started later this year. It has also been rumoured that he will be releasing a third book in 2015, entitled Let’s See What Happens Now I Can Legally Drink. Whether his fifteen minutes of fame will be up by then remain to be seen.

America Has Highest Smoking-Related Deaths In The World

America is a country that many revere for its accomplishments and advances in such fields as medicine, technology and military power. It isn’t all stellar news though: America has its fair share of negative reports. One is the well-documented case that it has the highest rate of obesity anywhere in the world, another that it spends more per person on healthcare in the developed world but also ranks last in effectiveness of healthcare in the developed world also. And the latest finding that America would rather stayed a secret is a recent report from the World Health Organisation which shows that America leads the world in smoking-related deaths.

The report shows that of the deaths occurring in the USA, a whopping 23% are supposedly linked to smoking, while Japan and France, renowned as amongst the heaviest smokers on the planet, have 12% and 5% respectively. China, another country with high smoking rates, was spoken of in the report thusly: “The results for China were also interesting with crude proportions of death attributable to tobacco being 12% for men and 11% for women.”

On the surface, these figures are troubling and highlight the need for America to work harder on stamping out the habit. However, a little further analysis portrays a wholly different picture. How is it that a country with a relatively low smoking rate takes the top spot for smoking-related deaths? In fact, 23% is not only the highest in the world but almost twice the global average of 12%. Not only do Japan and France have lower rates of smoking-related deaths than America, they both have higher rates of smoking and lower rates of mortality as a whole. This begs the question: How is it that the people of these countries smoke more, live longer and suffer fewer illnesses related to tobacco? It isn’t the case that these are countries with a life expectancy low enough for the population to die before reaching an age that cancer can kill them – Japan does after all have one of the longest life expectancies in the world. While it has been hypothesised that the Asians have a degree of resistance to lung cancer, this has not been said of other continents and so cannot apply to those in Europe. The vast geographical distance and huge difference in lifestyle between these countries further confuses this issue.

The figures suggest interesting places to focus future research – could it be the type of tobacco Americans smoke that causes the problem, or the way it is cured? Could it be certain additives that American tobacco companies are adding to their cigarettes that other countries do not? Either of those is possible, but it could also be a simple case of miscalculation.

While everyone knows that “smoking-related diseases”, despite their name, afflict non-smokers too, and can be caused by things other than smoking – such as diet, lifestyle and genetics – a number, if not all, of the American states have a check box on the death certificates to state whether tobacco was a primary or secondary factor in the cause of death, and some states have the requirement to tick the box simply if the deceased smoked. In at least some of these states, it isn’t a case of the physician’s final say, but a simple mandatory requirement that if a person smoked and died of a certain disease, they are automatically categorised as a death resulting from smoking. What this means is that a morbidly obese person with a sedentary lifestyle, appalling diet, a genetic history that predisposes him or her to a heart attack and who also smokes will be put down as a smoking-related death – even though there’s a very high chance that any of the numerous lifestyle factors, or indeed genetic history, could have been the real cause of death. This bolsters the number of deaths associated with tobacco, which is ideal for anti-smoking campaigners who can use such numbers to secure further funding to continue their campaign, but in a more objective view, such as the WHO report, it is rather alarming and also detrimental to a real understanding of worldwide health priorities.

America has the largest anti-smoking campaign in the world, and a lot of money is spent at the state and federal level to facilitate it. In 2001, Tobacco Control received $883 million solely from the Master Settlement Agreement – an agreement whereby the tobacco companies paid money to each of the American states to recoup the medical bills of treating smokers. While the $883 million to Tobacco Control will likely be somewhat lower today as part of that money is redirected to other essentials, the anti-smoking movement still commands hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The pharmaceutical industry donates hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-smoking organisations and to back smoking bans in an attempt to encourage smokers to move from tobacco to their own nicotine replacement therapies. Much money is also raised from and donated by the prominent cancer, lung and heart charities. To emphasise the sway held by these groups, in Texas one such foundation has threatened that if the Texas University does not ban smoking on the entire campus, both indoors and out, then it will give its $10 million grant money to another institution – and when the funding group has that sort of leverage over the receiver, there’s never any doubt as to what the results of any grant-funded research will be.

While it’s not easy to determine if America’s unusually high mortality rate from smoking is based on real deaths or falsifying the numbers, it is more than a little peculiar that a country with smoking rates as low as America can have death rates that are so high. The mandatory requirement of classifying any death of a smoker as a smoking-related death may work well for increasing the bank balances of anti-smoking groups, but it does a tremendous disservice to science and true world health efforts as whole. Perhaps if the figures were calculated in the same way as they are in other countries, the percentage would drop considerably.

Russia	4%
France	5%
Brazil	6%
Italy	7%
Germany	9%
China	11%
Japan	12%
GLOBAL AVERAGE	12%
Australia	14%
United Kingdom	20%
Canada	20%
USA	23%

Nokia Win Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet at Mobile World Congress

It’s been a seemingly long time since Nokia was viewed favourably in both the public and the tech world. The company has been long revered for its hardware and the incorporation of certain technologies in its device – such as FM Transmitters, USB OTG, HDMI output and so on – but it is also on the receiving end of negative reviews largely on the software side of things.

This looks to be in reverse now though, with Nokia winning awards for the design of the N9, and awards for the Lumia 900. Earlier this week was Mobile World Congress (MWC), which saw the unveiling of the incredible 808 device and yet another award for the Finnish handset maker. The 808 PureView landed the company the award for Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet at Mobile World Congress, and the judging panel consisted of analysts and leading journalists, making it an especially important award – it is, after all, these same groups of people that have been Nokia’s strongest critics in recent years.

The award itself is justified, and aside from the write-up of the 808 on this site you can learn about the technology running the phone from Nokia’s imaging expert Damian Dinning. Nokia’s Jo Harlow explained the importance of the award: “It’s a fantastic award because it signifies that consumer experience counts. It’s about tech, but it’s about how tech is used to make a consumer have a fantastic experience…These are first signals that we are executing against our strategy. That we’re back. That we’re bringing great products to our consumers – and that this is just the beginning.”

The first part of the quote is entirely true – it isn’t just about having an impressive sheet of specs, a quad-core phone still seems entirely pointless, but it’s about the core user experience when using the device that’s important, making it function in such a way that users want to pick it up, and more importantly know how to use it in certain situations, from travel to photography to social interaction. As for the second part of the quote, that signifies Nokia has at last truly begun to understand the situation it finds itself in and is putting its efforts into turning things around – so let’s hope we can expect more of the great pioneering that turned it into the biggest phone manufacturer in the world.

Privacy Campaigner Files Claim Against Google For Privacy Infringement

WMPowerUser reports that “Alex Hanff, a prominent privacy campaigner based in Lancaster, England, has filed a claim against Google at the small claims court for around £400 to replace his HTC Desire.”

The reason for the claim is that since purchasing his Android phone Google has adjusted its privacy policy to collect data across Google’s services, including the location data stored on its mobile operating system, to sell the profile to advertisers.

Hanff states that “The changes are a significant infringement of my right to privacy and I do not consent to Google being able to use my data in such a way” and he believes that the changes go beyond what is reasonable within a contract period.

Google’s initial response has been that those concerned can use the phones without logging into their Google accounts, essentially turning the expensive smartphone into a basic feature phone, which for many would make the purchase redundant and therefore not a valid method of response.

Whether this case will succeed or not remains to be seen, but it’s an interesting turn of events and, quite honestly, unsurprising. Google has been pushing its luck for a length of time regarding how it treats the private data of its users, and if this case gains a high enough profile it could potentially cause a chain-reaction from other users turning into a backlash against the company.

Cancer Research: Lobbying Your Donations

The latest proposal to come trotting out from the anti-smoking movement is plan packaging. The idea is simple, and to paraphrase: Bright packages lure children and non-smokers to take up smoking because the packages are just too alluring and the last form of advertising, if all packages are plain there will be no temptation to start smoking.

Yes, it’s absurd logic – people smoke for the cigarettes, not the packets. And if you take a look at your local tobacco counter, you’ll see many packages are white with just the logo (Silk Cut, Marlboro Light, Winston and so on) and rolling tobacco comes in largely drab packets. This post isn’t about why plain packaging won’t stop people starting smoking though (I’ve written on that elsewhere), but is to call attention to the fact that Cancer Research UK is lobbying for this measure to pass through and become law.

The website states:

Plain packaging means removing all branding from cigarette packs. This means that all packs, from all tobacco brands, will look the same. This won’t stop everyone from smoking, but it will give millions of kids one less reason to start.

It’ll only happen with your support. Act now while the Government is listening by entering your details on the right.

The purpose of a charity is not lobbying. People give money to Cancer Research because they take the ‘research’ literally and believe that is what their donations will be going towards. People certainly aren’t giving their money away to fund lifestyle lobbying, yet the organisation is keen to let us know that it has been a key player in all sorts of lifestyle policies over the years. Cancer Research doesn’t hide the fact that it lobbies government though:

Influencing public policy is one of the charity’s core aims and our work ensures that the charity’s research, early detection initiatives and other vital work can be carried out effectively, by helping to create a supportive political environment.

The charity also has its own subsidiary called Tobacco Advisory Group (TAG), which

The Cancer Research UK Tobacco Advisory Group (TAG) is a funding and policy-setting committee focussing on several key priority tobacco policy areas. [Emphasis added]

The committee currently funds two main areas of national tobacco work – policy research and policy campaigning/advocacy activities.

A small amount of support is given to health promotion research and interventions. [Emphasis added]

It’s brazen of a charity to be overtly lobbying government, and to use the money generously donated by the public in response to the terrifying cancer adverts shown on television, to fund policy-driven studies and lobby for new policies and restrictions on legal products. It’s safe to say most people would expect Cancer Research UK to be using that money on actively researching the disease and how to combat it – because certainly smoking is not the one and only single factor to the onset of cancer.

Perhaps it’s time this charity either did what it was supposed to do, or rebrand itself as a political lobbying group, or tell the public quite openly in its adverts what it will be spending the money on and see how many people keep on donating.