Friday, February 7, 2014

NBC News and the bullshit 'ZOMG Sochi Olympics Android hack' story

Your Android smartphone only installs malware if you're being dumb (or do it on purpose) — not automatically, and not just because you're in Russia.

This is just ridiculous, even for American "news" television. A report from NBC News was exposed — and rightfully so — by Erratta Security (via Techmeme) for being so misleading that, frankly, we almost don't know where to begin.

The short version: NBC News says you'll be hacked the moment you try to connect in Russia. And it tries to show that with two examples: New laptops, fresh out of the box, and an Android smartphone — which we'll focus on here.

In the piece, NBC's Richard Engel sits down with "top American security expert" Kyle Wilhoit — he works for Trend Micro, actually — and we see an Android smartphone downloading and installing malware. Oops. Hacked. Only, not really.

As Erratta properly points out (and Wilhoit explains on Twitter as well, actually), this is all about visiting malicious sites, and not about actually being in Russia.