Android-Based Botnet Discovered

A Microsoft engineer has found a botnet targeting Yahoo! Mail users on Android devices. Terry Zink says the botnet is being used to send spam e-mail messages from compromised Yahoo! mail accounts and speculates the users were either infected by a malicious Android application they might have downloaded to circumvent paying for a legitimate copy or a rogue version of a legitimate application. He says the spam samples had the same Message-ID with the tagline “Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android.”  Graham Cluley, an expert with Sophos, said if this attack did originate from Android devices, it would be the first time smartphones had been exploited in this manner. “We’ve seen it done experimentally to prove that it’s possible by researchers, but not done by the bad guys,” Cluley told the BBC. “We are seeing a lot of activity from cybercriminals on the Android platform.” (PhysOrg)(BBC)(Terry Zink's Cyber Security Blog)