Android growth spurs new mobile malware, SMS Trojan discovered

Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab announced the first malware for the Android operating system to be classified as a Trojan-SMS, the most widespread type of malware on mobile phones.

The malware is disguised as a media player application with the standard Android .APK file extension. When the 13KB file is installed, the mobile device will start to send SMS messages to premium numbers which incur charges on the user's account.

Because Android is growing at such an explosive rate, and users are storing an increasing amount of important data on their mobile phones, the platform is an attractive one for renegade application makers.

"We can expect to see a corresponding rise in the amount of malware targeting [Android]," Denis Maslennikov, Mobile Research Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab said in a blog posting Monday. "Kaspersky Lab is actively developing technologies and solutions to protect this operating system and plans to release Kaspersky Mobile Security for Android in early 2011."

The company has profiled the malware as "Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a"