Happy Birthday Android Malware – A Look At What You’ve Done In A Year

My apologies – I mean happy belated birthday. It was August 9, 2010 that Kaspersky detected Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer. “The new malicious program penetrates smartphones running Android in the guise of a harmless media player application. Users are prompted to install a file of just over 13 KB with the standard Android extension .APK. Once installed on the phone, the Trojan uses the system to begin sending SMSs to premium rate numbers without the owner’s knowledge or consent, resulting in money passing from a user’s account to that of the cybercriminals.” Now it wasn’t the first piece of Android malware ever but it was the first sophisticated piece of malware.

PaulSparrows took the time to go through the Android malware since then. Just take a look:

There’s no sign that this is slowing down either so, like your momma said, use protection out there Android users. It’s a dangerous world.