Android Smartphones Gets First SMS Trojan

Its now time to have some worry for Android owners. Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management solutions, announces that the first malicious program classified as a Trojan-SMS has been detected for smartphones running on Google’s Android operating system. Named Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, it has already infected a number of mobile devices.
The application is disguised as a media player application, but after the 13KB file is installed the Trojan will send SMS messages to premium rate numbers. In doing so, money passes from a user’s account to the account of the cybercriminal resulting in a huge wireless bill for the victim.

The Trojan can be avoided by ensuring your phone is set to not allow the install of unapproved Applications. You can check this by going into Settings than Applications to ensure there is no checkmark next to “Unknown sources”.
 
According to Denis Maslennikov, Mobile Research Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab, “The IT market research and analysis organization IDC has noted that those selling devices running Android are experiencing the highest growth in sales among smartphone manufacturers. As a result, we can expect to see a corresponding rise in the amount of malware targeting that platform. Kaspersky Lab is actively developing technologies and solutions to protect this operating system and plans to release Kaspersky Mobile Security for Android in early 2011.”

Also, users have to approve an application’s access to services on the phone. Clearly a media player accessing SMS messaging should raise an alarm, but the criminals probably assume many of us don’t check before allowing an application to access services. The signature for Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a has already been added to Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus databases.

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