http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/03/06/google-nukes-rogue-android-apps-on-users-devices
Andy Greenberg
THE FIREWALL
Google Nukes Rogue Android Apps On Users’ Devices
Mar. 6 2011 – 9:26 pm
Your Android phone has a built-in kill switch for nasty apps. And Google, apparently, is not afraid to use it.
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Over the weekend, the search giant announced that it had remotely wiped “a number” of malicious Android apps from users’ phones, programs that earlier in the week had been identified as malware and pulled from Android’s app store. “We are remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices. This remote application removal feature is one of many security controls the Android team can use to help protect users from malicious applications,” Google wrote on its mobile blog, linking to an explanation it posted in June of a built-in functionality for deleting apps from users’ phones.
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The last time Google deleted applications that were already downloaded to users’ devices was in June, and its targets were two proof of concept apps built by security researcher Jon Oberheide. As I wrote at the time, that use of its kill switch seemed to be a loud warning to malware writers about the company’s ability to remotely destroy their tools. After all, Oberheide’s apps were designed to show the possibility of creating an Android-hosted botnet, not to actually create one.
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Isn’t anyone concerned that “HeadQuarters” can assume control of YOUR hardware and override something you’ve done?
“Sorry, we know better.”
We’ve seen Amazon nuke content that a reader had paid for. We’ve seen Microsoft “Live Update” computers into bricks with “fixes” that break rather than fix. And, content purveyors have always harassed legitimate uses and legal Users with “digital rights management” schemes that “fit” like a suit from Omar the Tent Maker (i.e., good for the provider, disasterous for the User).
I think this is a demonstration to Android Users that you’ve taken a “snake to your bosom”. And, what happens when the bad guys crack the HQ code and they can put stuff on or take it off your hardware.
Haven’t we been down this road before?
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