Experts at Sophos have urged mobile phone owners not to panic following the discovery of the first cellphone malware that tries to make money.
The Troj/Redbrow-A Trojan horse (also known as "RedBrowser") runs on certain phones with support for J2ME (Java Micro Edition), posing as an application which enables cellphones without WAP capability to have WAP access. The Trojan, which is entirely in Russian language, sends a number of premium rate SMS messages, costing the user money.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said,
"Redbrow is a Trojan horse, which means it can't spread under its own steam. This, combined with the fact that it is written entirely in Russian and only works on the Russian mobile phone network, means that most people are extremely unlikely to ever encounter it. However, during the last year we have seen more and more malware being written for profit, and this is further evidence of that growing trend."
This is not the first time that Russian hackers have tried to use malware to exploit the cellphone SMS system. In late 2004, the Troj/Delf-HA Trojan horse was discovered, which helped spammers send unsolicited spam messages to mobile phones.