Trojan Sends Premium-rate SMS Messages, Aims at European and Canadian Android Users

By: Lucian Constantin, PC World

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. However, according to Kaspersky Lab senior malware analyst Denis Maslennikov, Android malware writers have shifted their attention toward the international market in recent months.

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