What appears to be the most sophisticated malware yet to hit Android phones has emerged in China, just as some security experts are predicting that smartphones would be one of the major hacker targets this year.
The China issue involves a virus that’s been dubbed Geinimi (a misspelling of Gemini).
The virus is distributed in a clever way: the hackers take genuine, well-known applications, repackage them with a Trojan payload, then put them up on third-party Android app "markets” where security vetting is less rigorous if it exists at all.
At the moment it appears Geinimi is restricted to China.
Mobile.Blorge reports that since malware doesn’t usually respect international borders, it may be that, as with previous problems with mobile phones in the country, the bug being exploited is with a custom edition of Android run by a Chinese mobile operator.
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