Google Play is pretty much the Wild West. Anything Apple controls, Google doesn’t care about. Offensive content, especially, thrives, but the idea is that the free market of ideas will winnow it down to just the best apps. Unfortunately, that includes some incredibly scary malware.
Specifically, DroidCleaner, a piece of malware that, in addition to the usual damage it does to your phone, will also use, well, a really clumsy and stupid way to try and put malicious software onto your PC, specifically by putting malicious software on your SD card and then hoping you’re dumb enough to have AutoRun toggled on when you plug your phone into your PC.
Laugh all you want: You think your parents know what AutoRun is? Yes, we just added another thing to the long, long list of what you have to do to your parent’s computer when you go home next.
Weirdly, all this malware seems designed to do is to flip on your computer’s microphone, record the ambient conversations, and send the recordings back a server. That’s it. Considering that on your phone this thing can swipe literally everything on it, that’s a rather…odd attack.
Nonetheless, it’s also a hint that phone-to-PC malware attacks are going to be getting more common and more complex, and likely sooner rather than later. So, maybe having an iPod to store your music isn’t such a bad idea, after all.