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Honestly, all malware "isn't really that bad" by the metrics you're using. Maybe it sends spam. Maybe it hogs your CPU. A few will crash your machine or break it in some obvious way. This one happened to steal your personal data (and attempt to steal that of your contacts').

You're right though, that it's basically exposing a hole in the OS security metaphor. Two really: the address book was unprotected and the application review process didn't work.

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> Honestly, all malware "isn't really that bad" by the metrics you're using. Maybe it sends spam. Maybe it hogs your CPU. A few will crash your machine or break it in some obvious way. This one happened to steal your personal data (and attempt to steal that of your contacts').

I was thinking more of "this will not steal my credit card" (unless you keep that info in your address book) type of malware. But, yes. I get your point.

Isn't this a trend in biology? Where less virulent strains of viruses out-perform more severe ones because they don't kill their hosts? Ebola is its own worst enemy because it kills its hosts, and kills them relatively quickly. I seem to recall reading that influenza or typhoid had become less dangerous in the last 100 years or so and they were attributing it to this, but I'm coming up blank on the google searches.

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