ID: IRCNE2011111326
Date: 2011-11-30
According to "computerworld", A new Android Trojan program that poses as an SMS management application is sending text messages to predefined premium rate numbers in Europe and Canada, according to security researchers from Kaspersky Lab.
Credit-stealing Trojans that send SMS messages or make calls to premium rate numbers were first designed for Nokia's Symbian and Java-powered mobile OSes and have existed for years in countries like China or Russia.
However, the rapid adoption rate of Android devices and the openness of Google's mobile platform has motivated malware writers to look for new victims in the smartphone market.
Until earlier this year, the vast majority of Android Trojans found in the wild targeted Chinese and Russian users mainly because installing apps from unofficial sources is very common in these countries.
The new Android Trojan found by Kaspersky is dubbed Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Foncy and, judging by various online reports from victims, it appeared sometime in September. The piece of malware is advertised as an application for monitoring SMS messages and is distributed via a file hosting websites, Maslennikov said.
Once installed on a device, the fake app sends four text messages to predefined premium rate numbers in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, the UK and Canada, depending on the country corresponding to the SIM card.
Despite incidents like these and numerous reports from security companies that claim that the number of Android Trojans is increasing rapidly, not everyone is convinced that the popular mobile OS has a malware problem.
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