Random Musings from Randal

What happens when anyone can develop and publish an application to the Android Market? A 472% increase in Android malware samples since July 2011. These days, it seems all you need is a developer account, that is relatively easy to anonymize, pay $25 and you can post your applications.  With no upfront review process, no one checking to see that your application does what it says, just the world’s largest majority of smartphone users skimming past your application’s description page with whatever description of the application the developer chooses to include. Sure, your application can be removed after the fact—if someone discovers that it is actually malicious and reports it.  But, how many unsuspecting people are going to download it before it is identified as malicious and removed?  This is precisely what is playing out in the mind of mobile malware developers today.

Client: “The layout is pretty spot on, but the hooky letters—”

Me: “The font, you mean?”

Client: “Yes, the font. It’s too snooty. It’s not any fun.”

Me: “I think it makes everything look quite professional.”

Client: “It’s too cold… What’s that sand one I like? With the sand letters.

Me: “I have no idea. I mean, I vaguely recall something called sand, but—”

Client: “Comic sands! That’s it. The Comic sands is the one I want.”

Another great blog tipped to me by friends.

hey, does this mean I can get a SAG card? :)

Adding this to my daily RSS feedwatch too!

It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date.

Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

“We believe these man-in-the-middle attacks are potentially possible on a wide variety of electronic voting machines,” said Roger Johnston, leader of the assessment team “We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine.”