Mobile malware menaces money

Kaspersky is reporting this morning that a Trojan affecting Symbian systems looks to transfer money from the accounts of users of a certain mobile-phone operator and into the accounts of someone else, presumably the person or persons responsible for the malware. The Trojan's not new -- but the target certain is.

Written in Python, the malware -- as per Kaspersky, Trojan-SMS.Python.Flocker, versions .ab through .af -- sends an SMS message with an instruction to transfer money from the user's mobile account to the other account. The amounts are rather small (under a dollar), but obviously if the infection becomes widespread, such things can add up without triggering a reaction from any scammed individual.

This sort of thing is old hat in Russia. However, the new wrinkle in the infection is that we're talking about an Indonesian provider -- a whole new "market." The infection itself is independent of the service provider, using the legitimate "151" money transfer service -- not quite the equivalent of pwning Paypal, but analogous. We in America don't do a lot of money transfers by phone, but the situation certainly bears watching in those countries that do -- and by anyone hoping that the US will catch up to overseas mobile conveniences anytime soon.