Vietnam lucrative new market for money-stealing SMS Trojan: report The Android app store Google Play is seen on a tablet screen in this photo taken in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on May 3, 2014. Tuoi Tre If you have unexpectedly run up large mobile phone bills or had your prepaid phone balance mysteriously deducted, check the latest apps you have recently installed on your smartphones. They may have been infected with a new Trojan that steals money from smartphone users by secretly sending premium SMS messages. Vietnam has emerged as a new lucrative market for the malware, known as SMS Trojan, according to a security report released by Internet security firm Kaspersky Lab on April 29. The malware is spread under the guise of a legitimate application that is provided for free. Once installed, it will take over the messaging function of the victim’s smartphone and send SMS messages to premium-rate numbers that charge senders US$2 per message, according to the Russia-based Internet security firm. Victims will have no idea that their devices are infected until they receive hefty mobile phone bills. The malware was first detected by Kaspersky Lab back in February 2013 and 14 various versions of it have since emerged, according to Kaspersky Lab Expert Roman Unuchek. The earlier versions were only capable of sending messages to premium-rate numbers in Russia, but by mid-2013 66 other countries, including Vietnam, appeared on the victim list. It has become a leader in terms of the number of attempted infections on smartphone users, and now continually occupies the leading positions among active threats, Victor Chebyshev, another Kaspersky Lab Expert, wrote on the securelist.com website last month. In the first quarter of this year, SMS Trojan accounted for almost a quarter of all detected attacks, according to Chebyshev. Attackers using SMS Trojan are focusing on Android users, as the platform makes up as much as two thirds of the global smartphone market, according to security firms. Besides stealing money by sending premium messages, the Trojan can do various things with incoming messages. It can “steal all of the messages, delete them, or even respond to them,” Unuchek warned. Smartphone users are advised to only download and install apps from official stores like Google Play, Apple's App Store and Windows Phone Store to avoid infection by the SMS Trojan. They should also install antivirus apps to protect their phones from malicious applications. Tuoitrenews