– Updated 03-19-2011 – After the recent discovery of some 50+ malicious applications on the official Android Marketplace, Google removed the malware as soon as they became aware of their existence. According to Help Net Security, this was four days too late to prevent the tainted applications from being downloaded over 50,000 times.
In response, Google remotely executed its Android kill switch to delete the apps in question. Google is pushing an update to close the software hole.
In an official confirmation of the incident, Rich Cannings, Android Security Lead says that Google will notify the owners of the affected devices after the malicious app(s) are deleted and the update is installed, “You are not required to take any action from there; the update will automatically undo the exploit,” he explained. </update>
Over at the Android Developers Blog, Rich Cannings, Android Security Lead details how Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) can remotely remove applications from an Android phone. The article explains how the Android Security team removed two applications that violated the Android Market Terms of Service.
The Google article says, “...we’ve also developed technologies and processes to remotely remove an installed application from devices.” The article says that Google chose to remove the applications because they knew better, “ … we decided … to exercise our remote application removal feature…”. Google does try to minimize the impact of this ability in Chrome by stating, While we hope to not have to use it, we know that we have the capability to take swift action …”
I wrote about Google’s and Apple’s control of the OS in 2009. The master marketers at Google have spun this ability to delete any file to be a good thing. However, nowhere in the article does Google state that it will not remove files in an arbitrary fashion like Amazon’s 2009 big brother-like overnight removal of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
