Cell Phone Eavesdropping Alert - Android Trojan Snoop

A nasty Android Trojan capable of stealing text messages and eavesdropping on conversations has, like all movie monsters worth their weight, morphed into an even more dangerous opponent. The security firm CA Technologies detected a piece of Android malware that hid in corrupt apps and recorded and stored users' conversations on the targeted devices, which could then be uploaded to remote servers.

"Before answering the call, it puts the phone on silent mode to prevent the affected user from hearing it. It also hides the dial pad and sets the current screen to display the home page. During testing, after the malware answered the phone, the screen went blank," Trend Micro wrote on its blog.

TIP: The auto-answering feature only targets Android's running version 2.2, not the new version 2.3; to update your operating system, go to the "Settings" tab under "Menu." (more)