Android SMS malware firm fined £50,000 and ordered to refund victims

Back in February, a SophosLabs researcher Vanja Svajcer discussed how he had discovered a malicious link on Facebook that led to malware being downloaded onto his Android smartphone.

Svajcer analysed the malware, adding detection for it as Andr/Opfake-C, and discovered that while posing as a conduit to popular games, it was coded to send an SMS message which subscribed the phone to an expensive premium rate service.

He even made a very short video of the malware automatically downloading to his Android phone…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.