At the DEFCON hacking conference, security experts Nicholas Percoco and Christian Papathanasiou debuted the first rootkit for Google’s open source Android mobile operating system.
According to The H Open, “Their aim was to show how slight the obstacles to the development of a such a rootkit are and how powerful the result can be. Android is Linux-based and desktop Linux rootkits are nothing out of the ordinary. The demo rootkit, dubbed ‘Mindtrick’, is a Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) and can conceal itself from other processes. The demo was included in a DVD given to DEFCON delegates.”
The rootkit can access an Android device via either unpatched vulnerabilities, or by masquerading as a legitimate application.
Current anti-virus software for Android does not yet detect the rootkit.
