CYBERSPACE — SMS trojans have been detected in the U.S. for the first time, researchers at Kapersky Lab announced.
"Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakeInst.ef" targets users in 66 countries, but has finally landed in the U.S. According to Kaspersky, FakeInst masquerades as an application for watching porn videos, and is capable of sending messages to premium-rate numbers. Once installed on the phone, the trojan can intercept incoming messages and then perform various actions, including steal messages, delete them or even respond to them.
As well as sending unauthorized text messages that can run around $2 each, the trojan is able to send a preset text from an infected device to a number specified in a command and intercept incoming messages.
“The geographical spread of SMS Trojans has significantly widened in recent times,” Roman Unuchek, senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, told InfoSecurity. “By the beginning of 2014, users in 66 countries had encountered the Trojan AndroidOS.FakeInst.ef, including in North and South America, as well as Europe.”
FakeInst was first detected by Kaspersky Lab in February 2013 and is believed to have originated in Russia. Since then, 14 versions of it have emerged, and have become increasingly more sophisticated.
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