Vodafone Android Phone comes with Mariposa Malware

An article at Internet Storm Center published yesterday warns of Malware on the HTC Hagic. Panda Security came across the infection when one of their employees baught a brand new Vodafone Android device and plugged it into their Windows based computer. Analysis of the malware revealed that it was a Mariposa bot client. In a blog post at Panda Security, researcher Pedro Bustamante said, “Here is yet another example of a company distributing malware to its userbase. Unfortunately it probably won’t be the last”.

Bustamante noted that when a colleague/friend of his hooked up the Vodafone HTC Magic to her PC, their Panda based AV software detected both an autorun.inf and autorun.exe as malicious. In a rather blunt comment, Bustamante asks:

“There’s also a Confiker and a Lineage password stealing malware. I wonder who’s doing QA at Vodafone and HTC these days,”

From a consumer standpoint, it will be interesting to see if anyone loses faith in Vodafone for their complete lack of security in this matter, and as of now, no official statement.