One of the Experts Said His Research May Still Be Correct
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In a follow-up blog post, however, Zink wrote
that there is still a chance that their research is correct.
On the other hand, the
other possibility is that Android malware has become much more prevalent
and because of its ubiquity, there is sufficient motivation for spammers to
abuse the platform," he wrote. "The reason these messages appear to
come from Android devices is because they did come from Android devices Zink
theorized. Before writing my previous post, I considered both options but
selected the latter.
So what should people believe? Is there a new
Android malware bot or not?
It depends, say two IT analysts who talked
about the situation.
"Part of the problem that we've got in
this environment is that there's so much pressure among security firms and
researchers to be the first to report an issue," said Rob Enderle,
principal analyst with The Enderle Group. "So the claims can be made too
quickly, without enough evidence. And if it is misreported, then there are a
bunch of researchers with egg on their face."
These kinds of questionable reports don't
happen too often, Enderle, said, but in this case, a botnet on Android would be
big because there are so many Android devices in use and a security compromise
would affect so many users.
