The article tries to make the point that side loading is the cause of piracy. That because anyone can search for a pirated game, find it, and easily install it, that this ability to sideload is what makes Android a poor OS from a security perspective. Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, BeOS, AIX, HP-UX, and others allow installing applications from "unknown sources" and they are not platforms of evil (take your MS shots here). It is silly that Slashdot even promoted this blog post. The author should address how software gets pirated (same way it does elswhere) - through exploits, hacks, cracks etc. Making it easy to install is not what causes piracy. It is a moral decision by the person doing the pirating. One thing that would help stop it: trial versions or timed versions of software. But don't blame sideloading. This is one thing that makes android development and alternate app stores so much easier on Android then other platforms. Of course the other option for any developer - sell your APK directly, and provide your own serial tied to something on the phone. Some companies do this and it can work. But as always, if someone has physical access to a device, then true security is impossible.

I hope the guy gets punished as a traitor. If everyone took his stance that "information should be free" and released what they should be shared, where would be? The next guy may want to level the playing field and share fighter plans, nuke designs, whatever he thinks should be free. No sympathy from me. And Assange is a jerk as well - he thinks he knows best on what to share. - I don't think or govt is perfect by any stretch, but sharing every secret without thought of the consequences is insane. If every Mother-in-Law knew every thought or feeling that another in-law had about her... we would have no one left alive after Thanksgiving dinners. Secrets are made to be secret.

I concur. Article is incorrect and Slashdot just regurgitated it. At least the blog post by the original author is correct. A Windows trojan - nothing else.

In EU they decided years ago to block EMEI numbers on stolen handsets - all the carriers participate and handset theft dropped to manageable levels. In the US, AT&T could do it for the iPhone and other phones but they do not... Why - it is not worth the hassle. They don't want the complaints from potential customers that bought an iPhone on eBay. AT&T would rather have the revenue of the new customer then deal with the complaints that someone bought a stolen phone. Why would Amazon behave any differently? They have the potential to sell hundreds of ebooks to the user of the stolen kindle and sell a new device to the victim that lost the original kindle. Amazon wins on all counts. People need to face facts - no vendor really cares. They will not bite the hand of recurring revenue.

I agree. OP is an idiot.
Another point is that no one should depend on client sided data as the sole means for input validation. That is why Web Servers check input even though JavaScript does it on the web site - clients can't be trusted. The only reason client side validation is done is to save time, and catch some errors early, but the real validation always comes later - for this package it would be the code checking at install time. MS knows Browser headers are spoofed all the time, so they chose not to bother checking them.

I agree 100%. The story sucks. The author gives MS a fail because it would download? The author never installed it and then said the system was F'd up.
Guess what, I can download a Mac binary or DMG from apple to my XP box. Where is the big story on that?
Maybe the next story should be "I downloaded warez and got malware". Give us some more non-news news.