Inside the Briefcase
Symantec Warns of Android Trojans That Mutate With Every Download
February 3, 2012 No CommentsSOURCE: PCWorld Business Center
Researchers from security vendor Symantec have identified a new premium-rate SMS Android Trojan horse that modifies its code every time it gets downloaded in order to bypass antivirus detection.
This technique is known as server-side polymorphism and has already existed in the world of desktop malware for many years, but mobile malware creators have only now begun to adopt it. A special mechanism that runs on the distribution server modifies certain parts of the Trojan in order to ensure that every malicious app that gets downloaded is unique. This is different from local polymorphism where the malware modifies its own code every time it gets executed.
