Since Google is considerably more popular than any other search engine, it also leads to more malware as a recently conducted study has reported. Windows users also have more trouble with viruses and Trojans than users running any other operating system. This all makes sense simply because hackers, to a great extent, make use of the same popular software and platforms regular users do. They also normally focus all of their attacks on the most popular platforms. Linux, for example, faces very little malware threat, first off because it’s a well-protected operating system and secondly because there are considerably fewer users that have Linux-powered computers compared to Windows users.
As Android has been gaining a lot of popularity nowadays, it’s only natural that some sort of spyware or malware is eventually developed and released. Today Kapersky Lab has discovered the first known Trojan that specifically targets smartphones running the Android operating system. Known as the Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, it has already infected several mobile devices. The new Trojan poses as a media player application. Users are prompted to install a file of 13Kb that has the standard .apk Android extension. The moment the user installs it on the phone, the Trojan affects the phone’s SMS (texting) application and starts sending messages to premium rate numbers. In the meantime, the owner most likely has no idea that this is happening and that he’s actually transferring money into the accounts of cybercriminals.
While the Trojan-SMS category is currently the most widespread class of malware for mobile phones, according to Kaspersky Lab this particular Trojan is the first to specifically target the Android platform.
“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,” says Denis Maslennikov, Mobile Research Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab. “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.”
So far Symbian, Palm OS as well as Windows Mobile have had problems with various malware. But now that Android is slowly gaining the upper hand worldwide, the number of attacks on Google’s platform are also expected to go up.
If you own an Android smartphone, to make sure that you avoid this kind of situation, pay close attention to the services that an application requests access to when it’s being installed. Especially access to premium rate services that charge for SMSs and calls. As soon as the application is installed on your device, there’s little you can do to avoid wasting money on expensive messages sent to premium services. Since jailbreaking is now legal and in the past few weeks and Apple has sort of lost control over what iPhone users install on their devices, soon enough malware might become a bigger threat for the iOS as well.
