Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
Botnets have tended to hide in the nooks and crevices of servers and endpoint devices. Now a growing number are hiding in the palms of users' hands. That's one of the conclusions of a new report detailing the evolving state of malicious bots.
"Mobile Bots: The Next Evolution of Bad Bots" examined requests from 100 million mobile devices on the Distil network from six major cellular carriers during a 45-day period. The company found that 5.8% of those devices hosted bots used to attack websites and apps – which works out to 5.8 million devices humming away with activity that their owners know nothing about.
"The volume was a surprise," says Edward Roberts, senior director of product marketing at Distil Networks. The research team even took another sampling run to verify the number, he says. In all, "one in 17 network requests was a bad bot request," Roberts says.
Source: Botnets Evolving to Mobile Devices
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @12:43AM (3 children)
This is why we all should switch back to feature phones ... unless this bot infection is considered a "feature".
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:00AM (1 child)
It seems like implementing RFC 3514 [ietf.org] could help prevent servicing the bad bot requests while still servicing legitimate requests.
Due to the designs of the two major smartphone app-loading systems, poor digital hygeine is strenuously encouraged.
Apple's approach is "You can't install anything we didn't approve for you, citizen: We dare you." Resulting in "Challenge accepted." = malware gets installed.
Google's approach is "Some of the apps are, well, kind of approved, but can still contain malware, and anyway, you can install other ones. Whatever." Resulting in "l33t-apk-warez" = malware gets installed.
Somewhere in the middle is probably a more effective approach that would reduce the problem, but I am short on specific suggestions.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:28AM
Don't let the Jews convince you that this is a phone thing, this is also about the Internet of Things devices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @03:57PM
While amusing. Feature phones are computers too. Always have been. ARM has been at the core of most phones since the mid 90s.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 30 2018, @02:33AM (2 children)
It won't permit me to download the current release of the iOS firmware. Whenever I try the Settings App crashes.
I think I got it from a specially-crafted Facebook video. I expect it's from FB because Facebook also crashes, in this case immediately after displaying its GUI but before it's ready to accept user input.
I emailed product-security@apple.com to report this and also offered to send them my iFone so they could image it onto a similar Fone then return it to me. They're generally prompt to respond; it's only been two days yet.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by julian on Saturday June 30 2018, @05:09PM (1 child)
Put it into DFU mode [theiphonewiki.com] and restore it with a computer running iTunes.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:41AM
I'll get my DFU on first thing when I get back to work tomorrow
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]