Bangalore: A crop of apps that are available on the market for purchase and download have been discovered to be fraudulent, and are in fact, Trojans that send premium rate SMS by compromising smartphones.

A developer named “Lagostrod” uploaded the Trojans, which were supposed to be free versions of popular apps like Angry Birds.
Google has taken the apps off the market, and has even deleted the developer’s account. The apps were also found (after Logastrod’s account was taken down), under the name Miriada Production. This account, including the apps associated with it was terminated as well. The rogue apps, however, continue to plague the market, since there are a number of people who downloaded the counterfeit apps from sites such as AppBrain.

Since the apps are in fact SMS Trojans, they send texts that cost the downloader around $5 per app, and a batch of around 3-4 SMS is sent once the download is complete. This means that the user could be charged up to $20 for one free download of an Android app.

Android malware and cases of SMS credit-thieving Trojans were reported frequently in countries like China and Russia till the beginning of this year because of the reigning popularity of downloading and installing apps from unofficial sources.

Kaspersky Lab senior malware analyst Denis Maslennikov, however, says Android malware coders have diverted attention and started targeting international market in recent months. According to him, “…today SMS Trojans are one the easiest ways for cybercriminals to make easy money fast”. He added, "Malicious use of premium rate SMS services is spreading around the world, and I'm pretty sure it's not going to stop any time soon”.

This situation highlights a study conducted in May this year by the Juniper networks, which summed up a shocking 400 percent increase in Android malware, mostly distributed via application download.