Top 5 Android malware troublemakers ID'd

18 hrs.

Suzanne Choney

A security company has identified five leading types of malware in the wild that could be dangerous to Android phone and tablet users, including one that snags?personally identifiable information and another that can send and read text messages.

SophosLabs said Thursday it examined statistics from the installations of its Android mobile security app on devices?in 118 countries, and the "volume of malware that we've discovered highlights that mobile security is a real and growing problem, especially on Android," said Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos. ?

"Criminals are creating more and more targeted malware for different platforms, and smartphone users need to wise up to the fact that security is no longer limited to PCs, but mobiles and tablets are also at risk if not sufficiently protected."

There are now more than 460,000 apps in the Google Play market for Android,?according to?AppBrain,?although there are other sources for downloading Android apps. And it is those other sources than can cause trouble.

Chet Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, told msnbc.com that most users get infected when they "side-load" apps. "This is the act of loading programs from non-official sources ... Often they are 'paid' apps offered for free by pirates who load them up with mobile Trojans."

Naturally, there isn't any obvious way to know when you've been infected, he said. "You might find out when charges appear on your mobile phone bill, or if your accounts start to become compromised. The best approach is to run security software on your phone to screen for anything malicious."

In February, Google introduced "Bouncer," a scanning service designed to identify malicious?apps?in Google Play. But recently, two?security?researchers?crafted a?malicious Android app?called HelloNeon to the Play Market, and the app made it through Bouncer's scan untouched.

We asked Google for comment about Sophos' findings, and will update this post when we hear back. But when Bouncer was introduced, Google vice president of Android engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer wrote on the company's blog that:

While it?s not possible to prevent bad people from building malware, the most important measurement is whether those bad applications are being installed from Android Market - and we know the rate is declining significantly.

Sophos said among the most frequently found types of?Android malware in the wild were these:

1. Andr/PJApps-C. "Most commonly these are paid for apps that have been hacked. They are not necessarily always malicious, but are very likely to be illegal."

2. Andr/BBridge-A. ?This one can "install additional malicious apps onto your Android device. It uses HTTP to communicate with a central server and leaks potentially identifiable information.

"These malicious apps can send and read SMS messages, potentially costing you money. In fact, it can even scan your incoming SMS messages and automatically remove warnings that you are being charged a fee for using premium rate services it has signed you up for."

3. Andr/BatteryD-A. "This 'Battery Doctor' app falsely claims to save battery life on your Android device. But it actually sends potentially identifiable information to a server using HTTP, and aggressively displays" advertising.

4. Andr/Generic-S. "These range from privilege escalation exploits to aggressive adware such as variants of the Android Plankton malware."

5. Andr/DrSheep-A. "Remember Firesheep? The desktop tool that can allow malicious hackers to hijack Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin sessions in a wireless network environment? Andr/DrSheep-A is the Android equivalent of the tool."

Sophos does have a free anti-malware program for Android users. Whether you choose it or another company's, the time has definitely come to get protection.

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

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Coke to enter Myanmar for first time in 60 years

FILE- In this April 20, 2009, file photo, a customer walks by cases of Coca-Cola at JJ&F Market in Palo Alto, Calif. Coca-Cola, the world's biggest soft drink maker said Thursday, June 14, 2012, it will start doing business in Myanmar as soon as the U.S. government issues a license allowing American companies to make such investments, the first time in 60 years. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file)

FILE- In this April 20, 2009, file photo, a customer walks by cases of Coca-Cola at JJ&F Market in Palo Alto, Calif. Coca-Cola, the world's biggest soft drink maker said Thursday, June 14, 2012, it will start doing business in Myanmar as soon as the U.S. government issues a license allowing American companies to make such investments, the first time in 60 years. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file)

NEW YORK (AP) ? The Coca-Cola Co. plans to start selling its drinks in Myanmar for the first time in 60 years, following the U.S. government's decision to suspend investment sanctions on the country for its democratic reforms.

Myanmar is one of three countries where Coca-Cola doesn't do business. The other two are Cuba and North Korea.

The world's biggest soft drink maker said Thursday it will start doing business in the country as soon as the U.S. government issues a license allowing American companies to make such investments.

The U.S. announced last month that it was suspending restrictions on American investments in the Southeast Asian country, which is still easing toward democracy. Until last year, Myanmar had been led by an oppressive military junta.

Coca-Cola said its products will initially be imported from neighboring countries as it establishes local operations in Myanmar; the company notes that it is has a history of being the among the first to enter or re-enter markets.

In 1949, for instance, Coca-Cola and other foreign companies were expelled from China by the communist government. After full diplomatic relations were established with the country in 1979, Coca-Cola had 20,000 cases of its flagship drink trained into the country from Hong Kong, which was still a British territory at the time.

The Atlanta-based company also noted that Cuba was one of the first countries where it did business, opening operations in the nation in 1906. But after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro's government began seizing private assets and the company liquidated and exited the country in 1960. The company has never operated in North Korea.

Any Coca-Cola products in those countries are obtained through independent third parties.

As part of its push in Myanmar, Coca-Cola said it is donating $3 million to support job creation for women in the country. The company will work with PACT, a non-governmental group that supports economic and health initiatives in developing nations.

Coca-Cola first entered Myanmar in 1927.

Associated Press

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The Mobile Hotspot That Discourages Bandwidth Hoarding [Wish You Were Here]

Bandwidth is precious. You paid for it. God help anyone who tries to steal it. The Karma hotspot flips this equation on its head. Share your connection, and both you and your leecher get 100MB of free data. It's enough to warm even the Scroogiest of hearts. More »

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end of tenancy cleaning - Tips on How to Clean White Grout

Tile as a material in homes is very wide-spread especially when it comes to bathrooms or kitchens. However, if you prefer white grout with the time it will lose its white colour and will become looking gray, orange or if it has mold -- even black. To return the natural brightness of the grout colour, you need to follow these simple steps and methods given below.

As a first instruction, the end of tenancy cleaning specialists advise you to use cleaning products that are bought from home-improvement stores. There is such a big variety of many items that are good in cleaning white grout and removing mold from it. When you start cleaning the grout, spray from the product onto it, let it sit for at least 10 minutes and scrub with an old toothbrush or a cleaning sponge. Bleach also can give you a great results, only apply it on the grout and rinse it with water.

The next option for grout cleaning is the cleaning eraser, when it is scrubbed on the grout surfaces it removes almost everything from it. After cleaning it should be rinsed with clean water.

If you prefer to avoid using chemical cleaning products, you can use household ones such as vinegar, baking soda, rubbing alcohol and many others. Filled in a spray bottle and spraid directly onto the grout surface, they start acting after 10 minutes. Scrub with an old toothbrush or a cleaning sponge and rinse when everything is shining. For cleaning the grout with baking soda, you need to prepare a mixture that consists of it and clean water until a paste is formed.

As a last advice, tenancy cleaning from London specialists suggest to purchase a special grout cleaning tool which can be found in the home improvement stores. This tool helps with the scrubbing and it easily scrapes away dirty particles from the grout surface.

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Ashes to Dust

While the events of 'Ashes' sound outlandish, Sigurdard?ttir's brisk writing style wins over the reader.

June 9, 2012

Ashes to Dust By Yrsa Sigurdardottir St. Martin's Press 368 pp.

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Reviewed by Anna Mundow for The Barnes & Noble Review

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Scandinavian crime writers -- particularly the older generation -- seem to make a virtue of dullness. Think of Martin Beck in the novels of Per Wahl?? and Maj Sj?wall, wearily tracking down laconic witnesses and piecing together flimsy scraps of evidence. Or Kurt Wallender in Henning Mankell's crime series, doggedly unraveling knots of deceit and venality as his self-doubt grows and his health declines.

The Icelandic writer Yrsa Sigurdard?ttir is clearly influenced by this tradition, although the prologue to her latest novel, Ashes to Dust, is hardly mundane. A woman lies bound and helpless. Something appalling is being done to her with pills, a syringe, a finger manipulating her tongue. When it is over, "the woman's visitor gently closed the bedroom door, showing far more courtesy than he had previously displayed," Sigurdard?ttir writes, flashing the sly, mordant wit that spikes her engrossing, carefully plotted mysteries.

Ashes to Dust is rooted in the volcanic soil of Iceland's Westmann Islands, where an eruption in 1973 buried houses and caused a temporary evacuation. Thirty-four years later, Markus Magnusson rummages in the basement of one of the abandoned dwellings. Upstairs his lawyer, Thora Gudmundsd?ttir from Reykjav?k, waits alongside an archaeologist who is ready to excavate the site. When Magnus calls Thora?down, she is confronted with three corpses, partly buried, and one head in a box. Magnus protests his ignorance and innocence, explaining that in 1973 a teenage friend, Alda, asked him to hide the sealed box and now, decades later, to retrieve it. The bodies, he insists, he has never seen before.?Soon after the grisly discovery, however, Alda is found dead in her Reykjav?k home. Magnus becomes a suspect in a new as well as an old crime, and Thora must penetrate an island community that cannily guards its secrets.

These events sound outlandish, but Sigurdard?ttir is a brisk writer whose plain style, in Philip Roughton's translation, can render a bizarre detail or a peripheral character utterly convincing. Like her practical-minded heroine, she advances the plot not by introspection but by accumulation and with forensic attention to detail. Alda's life, for example, must be excavated if Magnus is to be exonerated. That examination, however, reveals increasingly complex connections and deviations. Alda was a nurse who worked in a plastic surgeon's office but who also treated rape victims. And one recent rape case seems to have preoccupied her. So we enter the odious life of Adolf, the alleged rapist, and the tortured mind of his adolescent daughter?who has anorexia?and who holds a vital clue to Alda's death.

Too much, you protest. But in the densely interwoven society that Sigurdard?ttir depicts such accidental connections enrich rather than dilute the novel's power. "Everyone here was normal," Markus tells Thora soon after the bodies are discovered, "just your typical Icelandic fishermen's families." Violence and depravity belong in the city where Alda tended rape victims and where she was killed. It is the island, however, that holds the key to Alda's past and to the novel's more distant crimes. In scenes at times of great tenderness and at others of exquisite suspense, Sigurdard?ttir peels back the layers of shame and fear that conceal a shocking drama. "And who was the bad guy?" Thora's young daughter asks her. "It was the one I thought was the good guy," Thora replies. Exactly.

Anna Mundow, a longtime contributor to The Irish Times and The Boston Globe, has written for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, among other publications.

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Anthropologists finds high levels of omega-3 fatty acids in breast milk of Amerindian women

ScienceDaily (June 9, 2012) ? Working with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, anthropologists at UC Santa Barbara have found high levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids in the breast milk of economically impoverished Amerindian woman as compared to women in the United States.

Their research appears in the current issue of the journal Maternal and Child Nutrition.

The study compared breast milk fatty acid composition in U.S. and Tsimane women. The Tsimane live in Amazonian Bolivia, and eat a diet consisting primarily of locally grown staple crops, wild game, and freshwater fish. Samples of Tsimane mothers' milk contained significantly higher percentages of the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is crucial for infant cognitive and visual development.

Additionally, the percentages of DHA in breast milk did not significantly decrease across the first two years postpartum, the period during which infant brains experience peak growth and maximal uptake of DHA. This was also true for the U.S. women, and the study suggests that extended breastfeeding by both U.S. and Tsimane mothers may provide infants with a constant source of DHA during the critical period of brain development.

"The fatty acid composition of breast milk varies with the fatty acid composition of a mother's diet and fat stores. Ancestral humans likely consumed omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in equal proportions," said Melanie Martin, a doctoral student in UCSB's Department of Anthropology, and the study's lead researcher. "Tsimane mothers' omega-6 to omega-3 ratios were four to one, much closer to the ancestral estimates than observed in U.S. women."

Unfortunately, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in industrialized diets varies from 10 to 1 to as high as 20 to 1. This is most likely due to the absence of fresh fish, and regular consumption of processed foods and vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid (an omega-6), as well as trans fats. These high levels of omega-6 have been linked to increased risks of obesity, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease, and interfere with the synthesis of DHA and other omega-3 fatty acids.

"The Tsimane mothers' average milk DHA percentage was 400 percent higher than that of the Cincinnati mothers, while their average percentages of linoleic and trans fatty acids were 84 percent and 260 percent lower, respectively," said Martin. "Despite living in economically impoverished conditions, Tsimane mothers produce breast milk that has more balanced and potentially beneficial fatty acid composition as compared to milk from U.S. mothers."

The study comes in the wake of the May 21 issue of Time magazine, which reignited debate over the appropriate age at which a child should top nursing. "Buzz about the recent Time magazine cover missed the point," noted Steven Gaulin, professor of anthropology at UCSB, and one of the study's co-authors. "The American diet is eroding one of the most important benefits breast milk can provide -- fats that are critical to infant brain development. It's not surprising that, among developed nations, American children are last on international tests of math and science."

The study's findings highlight important questions about infant formula, the fatty acid content of which is based on the breast milk of U.S. mothers. "The study suggests that standards of fatty acid composition for infant formulas should be derived from populations such as the Tsimane," Martin explained. "And nutritional recommendations for infants should account for the prolonged requirements of fatty acids that breast milk naturally provides."

Also contributing to the study was Michael Gurven, professor of anthropology at UCSB.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Melanie A. Martin, William D. Lassek, Steven J.C. Gaulin, Rhobert W. Evans, Jessica G. Woo, Sheela R. Geraghty, Barbara S. Davidson, Ardythe L. Morrow, Hillard S. Kaplan, Michael D. Gurven. Fatty acid composition in the mature milk of Bolivian forager-horticulturalists: controlled comparisons with a US sample. Maternal & Child Nutrition, 2012; 8 (3): 404 DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-8709.2012.00412.x

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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