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New Symbian virus targets mobile banking service in Indonesia

Categories: Security, Symbian
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 2:02 AM

Kaspersky Lab detected a new malicious program for Symbian that targets customers of an Indonesian mobile phone operator. The Trojan-SMS.Python.Flocker has five known variants, from .ab to.af, and it’s written in Python.

If a phone is infected with it, the Trojan will send 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 cybercriminals.

The amounts transferred range from $0.45 to $0.90, hence if the cybercriminals behind the Trojan manage to infect a large number of phones, the total amount transferred to their mobile phone account could be quite substantial.

What is not clear, though, is which “flavor” Symbian OS they are talking about. UIQ? S60? Which versions?

Anyway, Kaspersky Labs’ Denis Maslennikov had this to say: “It seems that the focus on financial fraud in the mobile malware industry will only get more pronounced over time. Until recently, many people thought that malicious programs that send SMS messages without the user’s knowledge were a purely Russian phenomenon. Now we can see that the problem no longer affects only Russian users – it’s becoming an international issue.”

[Via: Cellular-News]

About The Author

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.

  • matthew bennett

    I read the source article from your link. It seems this is not a virus, but a trojan. The difference is that with a Trojan the user must run the application. A virus can propagate without user interaction.

    Trojan’s are less of a worry to end-users.