Will another piece of mobile malware convince Google manager of the seriousness of the threat?
Researchers at
Kaspersky
have discovered an SMS trojan for
Android
phones that targets users in eight western countries.
This trojan, which masquerades as an SMS monitoring app, gives an error message upon being launched, suggesting that it is incompatible with the
Android
version being used. Meanwhile, in the background it sends SMS messages to premium rate numbers operated by the crooks, who thus steal money from the phone’s owner. Such pieces of mobile malware are far from new – however, hitherto they had mostly been seen in Russia and China.
The trojan has a second component, which acts on incoming messages from certain numbers and hide these from the user. This is used to give the attackers insight into the number of premium messages sent from the phone.
While few security researchers will be surprised by yet another
Android
trojan, it is possible
Google
‘s Open Source Programs Manager Chris DiBone will be. In a
recent post
on his
Google+
page, he claimed that the threat from “viruses” for mobile phones is vastly exaggerated, calling companies selling malware protection for mobile devices “charlatans and scammers” and adding that their employees “should be ashamed of [themselves]”.
The accusation that the threat from mobile malware is exaggerated is not new. In 2008
G DATA
‘s Dirk Hochstrate
said
that “to some it might seem as if the security industry is more interested in making money than in providing real protection”. However, given the enormous rise in mobile malware in general and that targeting
Android
in particular, it is hardly surprising DiBona’s comments led to fierce reactions from security experts.
More on the SMS trojan at
Kaspersky
‘s
SecureList
blog
here
. A reaction to DiBona’s post by
Trend Micro
‘s Rik Ferguson
here
with another one from
ESET
‘s David Harley on a personal blog
here
.
Posted on 25 November 2011 by
Virus Bulletin
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