Age-old trick with brand-new target
Monday, January 18, 2010
Cyber criminals have turned to a scam from the early days of the internet to target the growing smartphone market: Trojan phone dialers.
Much like their PC-based predecessors, the Trojan dialers violate a target's lax network security and install themselves on the smartphone. Once there, the dialer automatically makes numerous calls to premium phone numbers, creating excessively high charges on the victim's phone bill.
The new generation, according to PC World, also uses text messages to snare the unwary. A message will be sent to large group of phones at the same time, urging prospective victims to call a given number, which, unbeknownst to them, charges a "premium rate." A recording designed to keep victims on the line as long as possible then plays.
Experts say that the dialers generally infest pornographic websites and message boards, where they are disguised as "software, video clips, or helper programs," according to the BBC. F-Secure malware researcher Mikko Hypponen points out that, while PC-based malware cannot directly steal money, mobile malware is very much able to do so.
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