This Christmas has seen a lot of interesting news. However, one of the massive talking points this holiday season was that of the new Christmas movie, The Interview. Now, under normal circumstances a new movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco would only get some attention (no offence guys) but would not cause the stir in media (and especially android sites) as we have seen recently. That said a movie release does not normally come with a real life espionage and hacking story attached. The Interview did however. It’s certainly more than likely you don’t need too much background information on this one so to keep the recap short. Movie about North Korea made by Sony. Someone hacks Sony (assumption is North Korea). Theaters refuse to show movie. Movie gets released online via Google Play on Christmas Eve. That’s the real short version.
Once the movie came out, it would probably have been assumed this would be the end of the story. However, we have heard so far that the movie had generated $15 million dollars through its online sales and not to mention has been downloaded a whole bunch of times. A good proportion of these downloads is probably of the illegal type. A movie like this simply cannot get released and the torrent not shared everywhere. That said, the latest on this ongoing saga is that it seems some of the torrents are coming with a very unwanted addition, malware.
The malware goes by the name Android/Badaccents and poses as an android app used to download the movie. Once installed, it manages to sift through and remove financial information. Now, the malware seems to be largely affecting South Korean banking institutes although the number of affected android devices is being reported as 20,000 (at the last count). That said, it does have the ability to spread further if continually installed. Now of course, not downloading the movie illegally is one surefire way to make sure the malware does not hit your device. Instead, you can simply stick to the main methods of downloading via the Play Store and so on. If you are extremely worried about the possibility then simply avoid downloading to an android device altogether. Either way and whatever way you choose to watch the movie, it is worth knowing that this is being reported. Have you watched the movie yet? What did you think?