Kaspersky Lab has detected a new malicious program capable of controlling a user's mobile phone account.
Denis Maslennikov, senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, says company experts detected a new malicious program for Symbian last week, which targets customers of an Indonesian mobile phone operator. “The Trojan is written in Python, a script language. It sends SMS messages to a short number with instructions to transfer part of the money in the user's account to another account, which belongs to the cyber-criminals.”
According to him, there are five known variants of Trojan-SMS.Python.Flocker, from .ab to .af. The amounts transferred range from 45 US cents to 90 US cents. Maslennikov says should the cyber-criminals behind this particular Trojan succeed in infecting many phones, these amounts will add up, resulting in quite a substantial haul for them.
It is clear the authors of this Trojan aim to make money, he adds. “It seems the focus on financial fraud in the mobile malware industry will only get more pronounced over time.”
Maslennikov says malicious programs that send SMSes without the user's knowledge were thought, until recently, to be a purely Russian phenomenon. “Now we can see the problem no longer affects only Russian users - it's becoming an international issue.”
The Kaspersky Mobile Security product blocks malicious programs by not allowing them to run. The company recommends users to exercise caution when using a smartphone to browse the Internet and to keep anti-virus databases up-to-date.
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