Six Arrested Over Japanese Android Porn Virus 92
AZA43 writes "Tokyo police have arrested six men, including two IT executives and one former tech exec, in connection with an Android malware campaign that netted $265,000. The men created a piece of Android malware that they disguised as a video player and distributed through an adult website. The app stole personal information and attempted to extort money for data 'protection services.' The malware doesn't appear to be particularly sophisticated, but it convinced more than 200 horny Japanese dudes to shell out $1200 each. And the arrests are one of, if not the, first time a major police force brought down criminals who used Android malware to extort a significant chunk of cash."
Ahem (Score:4, Funny)
convinced more than 200 horny Japanese dudes to shell out $1200 each
Either A) Japanese women don't look at porn, or B) They were smart enough not to shell out $1200
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If you wanted to catch women in a scam like this you'd have to do it a little differently. Instead of straight porn, have the scam work in a erotic novel that women like to read. When you get to a steamy part, pop up an add saying that you'll send 'Mr McStud' to their house. If they fall for it, have the scam be that they need to pay $1200 so they don't tell husband+world that she ordered a male prostitute.
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Oh, and some geolocated bullshit claiming that she's a resident of your hometown (except when they clearly can't figure it out and use the location of your ISP hundreds of miles away instead...)
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Dermatologist here. Posting as AC via TOR for obvious reasons - if my fellow professionals found out I am breaking the code and talking about this, they would kill my family and make me watch. We are doing everything we can to stop this woman, but the truth she has uncovered is just too powerful. We're not doing this just to protect our profession, but because the first-world economy is dependent on our spending. If this gets out, and people stop going to dermatologists, it could mean the end of civilizatio
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you don't know my ex-girlfriend.... she watched straight porn in the middle of our MBA classes when she got bored.
Anyway, there is a Windows "virus" like this too in Japan. The funny part is that my friend called me over in a panic, and it took me like 5 minutes to disable. (It was a some kind of special "HTML Application" .hta that IE apparently allows to do whatever the hell it wants, including install itself to be launched at start-up).
Re:Ahem (Score:5, Funny)
Either A) Japanese women don't look at porn, or B) They were smart enough not to shell out $1200
Or C) They don't use Android.
Japanese women ARE Android.
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No, Android was the subject of the porn. Those crazy Japs!
(sorry)
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http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/a-new-variant-of-malware-targets-mac-users/ [nytimes.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/mac-malware_n_1448561.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.macworld.com/article/1160085/apple_posts_mac_defender_fix.html [macworld.com]
You don't even have to turn over a rock in the last six months to have heard about the 600k plus macs that are infected.
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Though I am no where near the best qualified here to answer you but will attempt to do so anyway. Any OS can get "malware", however a *nix OS at some point requires either active agreement by the computer's operator to be installed or active attack of an exploitable programming error and/or socially engineered user
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Any OS can get "malware", however a *nix OS at some point requires either active agreement by the computer's operator to be installed or active attack of an exploitable programming error and/or socially engineered user rights.
That would be true with any modern OS (yes, even windows, unless you're running XP with admin rights)
In this case, it's an Android app, so when you install it, it tells you what it can access on your phone. Yet, users didn't cancel the installation, apparently.
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Apple's security model does help to prevent some cases where it's easier fo
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Like no one has ever used shell companies or shady lawyers to obfuscate ownership. It is a hurdle, albeit not a terribly high one.
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What about Apple's iOS? Does it get malware? I don't recall reading reports about iOS viruses.
You have CPU in your user name and you don't know that a trojan is not a virus? Get everybody now using Windows to switch to Ubuntu and you'll see a lot of Ubuntu trojans, but still no Ubuntu viruses. I'm not sure even Windows even gets viruses any more; your OS has to be pretty dammned crappy for a virus to work.
You have to be tricked into installing a trojan. You don't have to be tricked to be infected with a vir
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>>>I'm not sure even Windows even gets viruses any more;
Sony CD rootkit?
Java viruses through the browser?
Oh and it's "trojan horse". You don't get infected by a Trojan (a citizen of the city of Troy), but get infected by a trojan horse. If you can be a nitpicky prick about my word "virus" than I can be nitpitcky too.
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Correction. There are two ways to be infected by a trojan:
1. Buy condoms that aren't sealed (of the Trojan brand of course).
2. Buy a cheap hooker in Troy
Either one could work fine for you right?
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"Trojan" is short for "trojan horse" and hasn't used wooden horses for that trick since the ancient Greeks.
The Sony XCP rootkit was indeed a trojan, and wasn't a virus. You had to insert the music CD and run the programs. My daughter infected my computer with it, she wouldn't have run the program if she had the slightest inkling that a big, respected company like Sony would deliberately sabotage their paying customers' equipment.
The only real virus I ever got was way back in the early nineties when I took s
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Android gets malware. Android malware won't necessarily run on other Linux-based platforms.
It can, but if it does it'll be way more severe due to it being a remote exploit.
Re:But /. said Linux don't get malware? (Score:5, Funny)
Linux will get malware when? Ha, we have had malware for years, haven't you ever heard of emacs? It is a nearly fullly functional trojan OS disguised as a shitty text editor. This is nothing new for us.
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Looks like you pissed off the "vi" fanboys again. They can't take a joke, big shock. Well, I guess someone had to throw a hissyfit like usual...
Anroid != GNU/Linux (Score:3)
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Re:But /. said Linux don't get malware? (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't know what is more depressing. The fact that there are people out there that are stupid enough to fall for this or the fact that we have laws to protect such people from themselves.
I'd like to live in a country where law isn't there to prop up the painfully stupid. Are there any such nations?
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What seems stupid to you doesn't seem as stupid to other people, but the reverse is also true. Just wait till you get defrauded over a rental agreement and it won't seem like such a silly idea.
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Essentially all jailbreak techniques are application of malware principles (but for a good purpose from user's PoV). For example, some time ago your iphone could get rooted (and jailbroken) by visiting a certain webpage. This vulnerability has since been long fixed, but as long as there are ways to jailbreak, there are vectors for malware through same backdoors.
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Is it malware if you can just uninstall it?
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Well, I'd like to see how you'd make a Trojan Horse for my old (non-programmable) pocket calculator. :-)
blame the user (Score:1)
Most likely there were warnigns about the type of data that the app would have accessed, but the users didn't pay attention and agreed blindly.
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It's doubtful it asked for anything different than a typical Google app does.
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If you're going to get pwned... (Score:2)
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Are you saying this is a virtual "death by snu-snu"?
Wait wait wait (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait wait wait (Score:4, Informative)
I saw "Japanese Android Porn" and just assumed robot. Android the OS didn't even occur to me for a 10-15 seconds.
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Was it fully functional?
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It was obviously a virus that spreads pictures of Cutie Honey in...compromising positions.
video player?? (Score:1)
OK well beyond this specific thing, this whole idea of installing "custom" video players just for one specific video seems insane to me.
Like, we've had good and trustworthy video players for a really long time. Hell, mplayer runs damn near on every platform that exists. Then something comes along and says, "hey, to see this video you MUST install "MyCustomPlayerItWontJackYourSystemWeSwear!!.exe" ... and people do that shit? WTF?
Same for music. Why in the hell prompted the break from the former "standar
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OK well beyond this specific thing, this whole idea of installing "custom" video players just for one specific video seems insane to me.
Like, we've had good and trustworthy video players for a really long time. Hell, mplayer runs damn near on every platform that exists. Then something comes along and says, "hey, to see this video you MUST install "MyCustomPlayerItWontJackYourSystemWeSwear!!.exe" ... and people do that shit? WTF?
Same for music. Why in the hell prompted the break from the former "standard, trustworthy players separated from the content they play", and towards, "using custom apps for every little thing?" You see it increasing now on tablets too.
It's crazy!
Horny teenagers will install it even if its called "MyCustomPlayerItWillJackYourSystem.exe if they're promised some hardcore porn.
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Horny teenagers will install it even if its called "MyCustomPlayerItWillJackYourSystem.exe if they're promised some hardcore porn.
you don't need to install anything to get hardcore porn.
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Horny teenagers will install it even if its called "MyCustomPlayerItWillJackYourSystem.exe if they're promised some hardcore porn.
you don't need to install anything to get hardcore porn.
Of course not, but horny teenagers don't necessarily know that and will install ANYTHING if promised hardcore porn.
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A while back all the Monitizers figured out if you don't hide the data behind an app, anybody with a bit of sense could make a better program than you and take all your business, hell someone might even open source it and kill a lot of the profit in the market. At one time many software providers had a lockin on their customers with binary software and undocumented file formats. With the rising of the internet a lot of closed file formats died along with their parent companies and a era of openness ensued.
wow executives that can code! (Score:2)
wow executives that can code!
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Lots of execs can code (e.g. my boss). It's after the company goes public and the corporate bureaucrats start running things that you get the elevated accountants and managers running the show.
Not a new scam (Score:1)
There are lots of PC scam which does pretty much the same thing over the years in Japan - you click on the "free" porn links which asks for basic user registration for creating an account, and by the time you finished watching the porn the site scares you by displaying your IP address and a general location of your physical address deduced from the IP on a pop up and claims that by watching the porn videos on the site you own them X amount of yen which you must transfer into an account within a certain time
Misread it (Score:2)
I first read the title as "Six Arrested Over Japanese Porn Android Virus" and thought their sexbots got hacked. Not as interesting now...
Walled Gardens look quite nice (Score:1)
When the alternative is a field of manure.
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My dog disagrees!
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I know, because being able to do whatever you want (even if there is some risk) is so very, very terrible.
Re:Walled Gardens look quite nice (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess if your only 2 options were a walled garden or a "field of manure" then you might have a point. A malicious app that affected 200 people doesn't exactly taint the entire Android environment. Conversely, the walled garden approach does affect all non-jailbroken iOS users.
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I prefer to see it as I "outsourced" my due diligence to Steve Jobs et al.
Without a review process, you have to open your phone to it before you know what it is going to do. Run just once, you could be totally exploited. I prefer some test phone in a lab do that for me.
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I prefer some test phone in a lab do that for me.
And you're assuming that Apple is the sole mobile OS company to do this? The Google Play store is in fact scanned regularly for malware, and it does get removed and developer accounts do get banned. The major difference between the Android and iOS environments is that on my phone I can download and install an app directly from a website. I don't need to do that, and I understand that those apps have not been vetted like apps in the Google Play store, but it remains an option for me. It's not an option f
Would A Porn Virus Be A Robotic STD? (Score:1, Funny)
Robot porn (Score:1)
Japanese Android Porn Virus (Score:1)
I wish I could go back 30 years in time to tell people that "Six Arrested Over Japanese Android Porn Virus" is one of the news headlines of the future :)
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I don't know, doctor. My sex-bot beeps and reboots every time it comes. It must be some sort of virus.
Why? (Score:1)
There are enough horny Japanese who will pay $1200 for porn that the virus is unnecessary.
Mixed Feelings (Score:1)
Android malware? (Score:1)
265 Grand? (Score:2)
It is not a virus (Score:1)