Google's Android falls victim to its first SMS Trojan

Popular security company Kaspersky Labs has today revealed Google's open source mobile phone system, Android, now has it's first SMS-based trojan.

The trojan, called "Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a", is 13 KB in size and poses as a seemingly legit media player for smartphones running Android. Behind the scenes however, it's an entirely different story Kaspersky Labs says, with the Trojan secretly exploiting the system to send SMS messages to premium rate numbers at a cost to the owner.

The Android platform isn't the first to experience these sorts of SMS Trojans - according to Kaspersky Labs, in fact they're the most widespread class of malware for mobile phones. It's not the first case of Android devices infected either, with the first Android spyware appearing in "isolated" cases in 2009.

“The IT market research and analysis organization IDC has noted that those selling devices running Android are experiencing the highest growth in sales among smartphone manufacturers,” Denis Maslennikov, Mobile Research Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab wrote today.

"As a result, we can expect to see a corresponding rise in the amount of malware targeting that platform."

Kaspersky Labs is one of many security vendors working on a security solution for Android smartphones, with company officials hoping the first edition will be released early in 2011. In the meantime, the company recommends Android users pay close attention to the services an application requests access to when it's installed.