08 Nov 2004
Spammers use Trojan horse to send SMS spam to mobile phone users, Sophos reports
 |
| Spammers are using a Trojan horse to send junk
SMS messages to mobile phone users. |
Anti-virus experts at Sophos have identified a new Trojan horse
which attempts to send spam messages to mobile phone users.
The Troj/Delf-HA Trojan horse
downloads instructions on which spam campaign to run from a Russian
website, and can plague owners of cellphones by sending them
unsolicited junk SMS text messages.
The Trojan horse sends spam SMS messages by using the "Send a
text message" facility found on the websites of several Russian
mobile phone network providers.
"Cellphone spam can not only be a nuisance, but it can also cost
the phone owner money. In the past we have seen SMS spam campaigns
designed to encourage recipients to ring an expensive phone number,
or sign-up for a costly chatline service," said Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Now SMS spammers are
taking a leaf out of the book of email spammers, and using
unprotected innocent PCs to pass on their unwanted messages."
Although only a small number of instances of the Trojan horse
have been sighted so far, Sophos recommends companies protect their
email gateways with a consolidated
solution to thwart the virus and spam threats as well as secure
their desktop and servers with automatically updated anti-virus
protection.
About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.