(Un)Safe Smartphones

[Jerroen]

Dear Smartphone users,

For my graduation paper I am looking for incidents concerning (in)security of mobile banking on Smartphones. I am looking for people that have come in contact with this form of fraud. We are interested in malware infections on smartphones, so if you have ever come in contact with that it would be great if we can ask a couple of questions about that. Specifically, situations around any form of abuse of your Smartphone through malware and the use of mobile banking is very interesting for the research.

Malware, such as SpyEye- and the Zeus-trojan( but also other variants of malware) in combination with the Smartphone is especially interesting for the risk-analyses in our graduation paper. If anyone has any experience with the above and does not mind answering a couple of questions about it, please contact me through this forum or send an e-mail to researchnhl@gmail.com.

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards,
Jeroen Veenstra

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[cali]

Welcome to the site and good luck with your project.

[UltraDroid]

Welcome to the forum!

[Jerroen]

Thanks for the welcome guys.

[Valhalla]

Welcome! Aye tis a good topic indeed lol. Will I have downloaded a 3rd party app one time and lookout security did scan it and saw it was a malware. I was able to remove it right away. But far as money wise I haven't had issues. However I would look into people who have used google wallet. I hear they no longer allow pre paid cards. Only credit cards, but even then some peoples information on the app has been hacked. Also infected QR codes are poping up all over. More and more people are using smartphones so places like best buy have QR codes all over there store. You see a tv you like, and want more info? Will there's. QR code next to the price tag. You can scan it with your phone to get the info. So hackers would make infected QR codes and past them over the store tags. You scan the code useing a app like google googles or barcode scan etc. Then it downloads the malwhere or trojen right away. They can blend it in and you think your getting your info on the tv, and yes that's true but at the same time you just downloaded somthing very bad. Hope that gives you an idea for somthing to look into for your paper. :-)
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[Valhalla]

Ooo lots of bad grammer there, my apologies. I had just woken up then, and I was sitting on the pooper.

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[Tears_for_Fears]

How come so many people are using their phones while sitting on the pooper? Especially while doing things like assisting someone with Smartphone safety and writing such a long post in an early morning... Someone even made a video parody about it... :| :D

Should I laugh or should I cry?

Sorry for being off-topic. I haven't experienced any malware on my phone, but Valhalla explained it pretty clearly. Though I think it's a bit more rare occasion when things like that happen, as far as my own experience goes. (2 years)

Just have to learn to see whether a source is trustful or not.

---
When people run in circles,
it's a very very mad world.

[Jerroen]

Thanks for the response guys.

What we found in our research so far, is that the official apps market place are is always trustworthy. Though i agree that most of the apps on the official market place are good and dont have any malware in them. When looking at malware alone, android has been targetted a lot, and also the android market place was a easy target for apps with malware, if you compare it to the approval process that apple has, the android and the 'open market' that it is, is failing in security somewhat. Though there is a new program running trough the app market: Bouncer, wich scans apps when they get uploaded and also scans apps that have been on longer for malware.

Valhalla:
You had experienced an app with malware, where did you download this app from?

Tears for fears:
I agree that you should always learn if the apps are trustfull or not. Comments or reviews from other users is a good way to do that. Though sometimes its so damn hard to see what is good and whats not.

[Valhalla]

An app browser called Opra Mini. The browser is very good but I will no longer download Opra Mini apps in there store. I forget the name of the app I was downloading.

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[Jerroen]

@valhalla: Okay, thats very interesting. If i may ask: how did you get rid of the infection? Also, how did it affect your smartphone?