Sooner or later it had to happen in this world of tech where viruses are becoming part of the norm. It appears the first virus to hit the Android OS has been identified by cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab.
According to an article over on The Register by John Leyden, the Trojan virus is known as Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer-A, makes its way to your Android smartphone via a message prompting the user to install a 13KB media player app carrying the standard Android .APK extension.
However once the user installs the “harmless” media player app, the Trojan sends SMS messages to premium rate numbers without the users knowledge, thus the user ends up with a huge bill while the cyber criminals behind the virus scoop off a slice of the earnings.
The mobile research group manager for Kaspersky Lab, Denis Maslennikov has said that “the success of the Android platform in the marketplace has triggered increased interest from virus writers.”
In the past there have been reports of isolated cases of Android smartphones becoming infected by spyware; however this is the first time an “SMS-spewing Trojan” which is quite common in the mobile malware area has hit the Android platform.
Russian security company, Kaspersky Lab intends to push out a new mobile security product to respond to the increasing threat in early 2011 called Kaspersky Mobile Security for Android.
So have any of our Android packing readers installed this “harmless” media player and been infected? If so feel free to shout out in our comments area below.