Kaspersky reports new Trojan targeting mobile banking accounts

A new malware targeting Symbian based mobile devices in Indonesia according to Kaspersky Laboratories experts. This malicious application in the form of a Trojan is written in Python, a script language. It generates SMS messages and sends them 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.

As of today there are five versions of Trojan-SMS.Python.Flocker, from .ab to .af. The amounts requested for transfer vary from $0.45 to $0.90 which means that if the fraudsters behind the Trojan manage to install their malware to a large number of devices their income will account for significant figures.

"Obviously, the authors of the Trojan want to make money,” said Denis Maslennikov, a senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab. “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."