Chinese firms behind 'Sexy Space' Trojan
F-Secure has identified three China-based companies as the creators of the "Sexy Space" Trojan, which was identified last week to have passed through Symbian Foundation's digital-signing process.
XiaMen Jinlonghuatian Technology, ShenZhen ChenGuangWuXian Technology, and XinZhongLi TianJin cloaked the malware, also known as Yxe, and submitted it to the Symbian Foundation under its Express Signing program, security company F-Secure said Wednesday in a statement.
Developers are required to submit mobile applications to the Symbian Foundation for evaluation, before the applications are accepted and enabled for handsets running the Symbian operating system. The apps are first automatically scanned for viruses. After that, random samples are submitted for human audit. Sexy Space had not been subjected to human scrutiny, Symbian's chief security technologist Craig Heath said last week.
F-Secure's senior security response manager, Chia Wing Fei, explained that the Trojan would have allowed attackers to simply send a link via text message to a malicious Web site and prompt the mobile recipient to download the worm. Once the malware would be installed, it could send similar text messages to all contacts listed on the phone.
"These messages are sent in your name and from your phone," Chia said. "It means you will pay for each SMS sent by the worm. A typical cost for a single text message might be 5 cents. If you have 500 contacts in your phone, an infection would cost you ($25)."
According to F-Secure, this is the first identified text message worm.
The Symbian Foundation became aware that Sexy Space was a Trojan earlier this month, and the signature was revoked. But an error on Symbian's servers meant the application was still available for download until last week.
F-Secure said that although the problem is currently not widespread, there have been a few confirmed reports in China and the Middle East so far.
All Symbian Series 60 third-edition phones by Nokia, LG and Samsung are potential targets of the malware, including popular models such as Nokia N95 and Nokia E71, said F-Secure. The Symbian platform is used in just under 50 percent of all smartphones.
Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.
The chinese government also encourages Chinese companies to copy/counterfeit products from around the world to make China the worlds manufacturing base. You should buy Chinese only if you support China World domination.
I'm starting to agree with @terryrowlands. I have always felt rather guilty purchasing anything made in China because of the poor standard of living of many of their citizens, how they treat their citizens as a natural resource to be used as they see fit and don't seem to put any value on human lives..
Now, we find that the Chinese have been hacking computers all over the world http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/03/29/2009-03-29_snooping_dragon_Chinese_hackers_crack_co.html
And on top of it all, we can't even trust them to create a simple app for a phone.
Maybe it's time we started lobbying our governments to stop doing business with China, and stop buying products made in China. Of course, getting our voices heard over the voices of the rich who stand to make millions from the cheap labour, and have no morals anyway, might well be impossible.
Plus, it's getting almost impossible to find anything that's NOT made in china any more.
This is why the rich should not be allowed to govern. Of course, since they have all the guns it's pretty unlikely to change.
Don't forget, China owns the US (national debt), so now all of our decisions have to be made to with Chinese approval. On top of that, we're going to add $1,500,000,000 more debt with the new health care program.
So stop buying Chinese products & stop voting for lawmakers who spend more $$ than we have.
I think people should look around their homes and see just how many items they own are made in China, before posting comments like: "You should buy Chinese only if you support China World domination." It's easier said than done.
Plus our government can not boycott China since we owe them billlions in loans because of our financial mess.
Amazing.
There is more than one China -- What we are talking about here is Mainland China, and this China's economy has different drivers than our long-time friend and ally, Taiwan, who is both "de facto" and "de jour" its own country.
[NOTE: I know you have to cut this to please the Chinese censors, but I still think it is worth remembering]
Also, maybe there is a conspiracy, maybe there isn't, I have no personal knowledge of one, and I tend to distrust such theories. You don't have to rely on conspiracy theories to explain the situation. Look at it this way:
People here have blamed "the rich" for moving jobs to China -- as if that were a conspiracy. For an example, assume that producing something in China costs 50% of what producing it here costs, and that shipping only adds 15%. 50% + 15% = 65%. If you leave the price @ 100%, you will make a bunch more money. Most Western cultures evaluate this as a good deal. Other cultures and sub-cultures evaluate the equation differently. But however you evaluate it, it is not a ?conspiracy?.
People consistently claim that Chinese goods are cheaper than those produced elsewhere are. That depends on how you evaluate ?Cheaper?.
? If the only cost you consider is price, they are indeed much cheaper.
? If you include other factors, then flatly, NO, they are NOT. They only seem to be because we have all bought in to some Accounting Tricks. (Yes, Queue the "Enron" theme music).
Some examples (and there are hosts more of them):
R & D:
Because the Mainland Chinese seldom respect other countries' trademarks and patents, they do not need to account for the development costs when they price their goods. For drugs and electronics that is a substantial savings, though for other products (i.e. Steel or electricity) that is less of an advantage. Nevertheless, every time they ignore someone's trademark or patent they artificially deflate their price. If the total number of doses of a drug consumed remains constant, and the real developer gets to sell fewer of them, they need to either mark up the price accordingly, OR not fund expensive research projects -- a vicious circle that will bite us hard eventually.
For now, though, the price of such Chinese goods is less than the cost of such goods.
Workers' Compensation / Safety:
China's traditional culture, both before and after Mao's revolution, exalts the good of the group over that of the individual. Currently, the good of the group involves producing more, so individual safety and health are subordinated to that, and both levels of workplace safety and construction quality are lower than they are in the west. This leads them to accept far higher levels of injury and death in the workplace than is acceptable in the West. It also leads to brand new schools collapsing on top of children in relatively mild earthquakes. Some people love OSHA, some people hate OHSA, but everyone agrees that it costs. Again, a cost that is not included in China?s lower price.
Pollution:
Like the west, some areas of Mainland China enjoy a nicer, less-polluted environment than others. In today's China, the economic and environmental climate is much like that of the US of 50 or 100 years ago -- companies do not need to include the cost of pollution in their pricing models. Once a pipe full of paper-factory waste hit the nearest river, the pollution was no longer the company?s problem. This thinking brought us 'Love Canal' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal), the Cuyahoga River catching on fire so often (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_river), DDT wiping out wildlife (a continuing issue world-wide), and a whole host of similar problems. Yet again, more costs that their "Enron-Style" Accountants do not include in their pricing.
In the US, we are starting to assign some of the costs of such examples of 'Public Bad? (as opposed to 'Public Good') to the companies that created the problem, and the products that they create. We have a long way to go -- in part, because not all places assign costs this way.
Un-evenly assigning such costs nationally lead us to create things like clusters of refineries and other 'dangerous' facilities in poor areas where there are fewer environmental laws or lesser enforcement. Globalization of the problem brought us, among other examples, the disaster in Bhopal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster).
It is short-sighted thinking coupled with accounting games like these that that make it appear that goods are cheaper when we buy them from China (or any similar country).
Chinese goods aren't really cheaper, they only seem to be if we ignore the fact that the price we pay today is only a small part of the total cost of the product.
- by AKFG91 September 18, 2009 10:22 PM PDT
- well this day on work and i was using my windows live messenger 2009 and theres this kind of virus in a shape of a link that makes the computer works out of control
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(11 Comments)but this time using the windows live messenger is not longer safe to use by this link that is apearing all time so is more saefty to connect in a hotmail messenger that using the windows live messenger program
but i am doing a teory for stoping this virus
well time ago i make a teory for stoping and blocking the recycler virus so i can stop this one just i need so time to make this teory