In order to protect its customers against what is best considered their own stupidity, Google has announced that it will begin to remotely nuke trojan-like applications that a user may have installed in their phone. It is estimated that up to 200,000 users may have downloaded the almost 60 malicious apps from the Android app store.
These apps came in different flavors; some were labeled innocuously, such as Scientific Calculator. Others were what I like to call “asking for trouble” like the Hilton Sex Sound app. In most instances, the apps contained code that uploaded information such as the phone’s unique identification number as well as personal information. Some even downloaded further code which exploited security holes found in earlier versions of the Android mobile operating system.
Google announced that it will push out a mandatory update named “Android Market Security Tool March 2011” to patch the hole. Now if only Google would monitor what my less-tech-savvy friends do with their computers and fix it for them, I’d have a little more free time.
Sources: The Washington Post, Google Blog
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