First SMS Trojan Targets Android Phones
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010Software antivirus company Kaspersky Lab has spotted the first Trojan that is targeted towards Smartphones running the Google Android operating system.
Kaspersky Lab is one of the largest software antivirus companies operating in the computer security sector and has named the Trojan SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a. This particular Trojan has played havoc with a number of mobile phone devices, and the efforts of Kaspersky Lab is in the hope that fewer users will be affected in the future.
The Trojan runs under the disguise as a media player application; for users this seems harmless and so once they are prompted to download it, the file is installed with what is known as the standard Android extension: .APK. However, harmless it is now. Once it is on the phone, the Trojan starts to send SMSs to premium rate numbers. This all done without the user’s knowledge, and this means money is passed from their account to the account of a cybercriminal.
With Smartphones becoming more and more popular, this kind of SMS category of Trojan has become more and more prolific. This specific Trojan is the first to target the Android platform, however, and spyware has also been detected in some devices that run Android in the past.
Denis Maslennikov, Mobile Research Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab, says “The IT market research and analysis organisation 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.”
As with any computer, users have been encouraged by software antivirus company Kaspersky Lab to check out any download that an application may request.
Guest Article by Neil Camp


My name is Alan Potts and I'm the Editor of the Antivirus-BUYability web site and Managing Director of BUYability Limited. You can connect with me or keep up to date with new posts on this blog via the following social media sites: 








