Perkele: New Android App That Steals Your Data

The market of applications was expanded by new virus software for mobile devices running the Android operating system. The application intercepts incoming SMS-messages, as it is said in the blog of a well- known computer security expert Brian Krebs.

It is, as he says, is a program called Perkele, which is sold at one of the underground Internet forums. The essence of the program is that it intercepts incoming SMS messages and forwards their  text to the of the masterminds of the virus attack, who learn the confidential user data including codes to e-banking control or some secret personal information.

The program is developed to steal personal information about users of Internet banking of 69 banks from France, Spain, Germany, Australia, Singapore, India, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland and Turkey, Krebs says. These banks use a so-called two-level user authentication, i.e. they demand that users should enter not only the password, but also a special code that is randomly generated and sent to the client via SMS to confirm the payment or transaction.

Perkele is designed to work together with another malicious program for computers, which installs the virus on an Android smartphone. This second program modifies the payment web page on your computer, replacing the real instructions by the false ones: from the “new” manual user finds out that to be able to use a two-level authentication, he or she must install on the phone this very program Perkele which is supposedly a special secure program for Android gadgets. According to Krebs, to be able to attack customers of a specific bank a person can buy a Perkele version for $ 1,000, while a "universal" version costs $ 15,000.

“Take a moment to read and comprehend an app’s permissions before you install it,” Krebs advice. “Also, make sure you download apps that are scanned through Bouncer (Google’s internal malware scanner). Finally, do a bit of due diligence before installing an app: Would you randomly grab some Windows program and install it without learning something about its reputation, how long it had been around, etc? Hopefully, no. Treat your phone with the same respect, or it may one day soon no longer belong to you.”

Even security adviser of the F-Secure, Finnish antivirus company, Sean Sullivan had a chance to face this program. He even placed a copy of the Perkele ad at the official F-Secure blog. What is strange is that it was written in Russian.

Surely, there are much more “progressive” mobile malware apps in comparison with Perkele. There are lots of the cross-platform ZeuS-in-the-Mobile or Zitmo malware variants, but they are all developed to work with a particular PC malware strain known as ZeuS. What makes Perkele stand out of the line is that it can be loaded as an add-on by virtually any financial malware family that supports web injection.

According to "Kaspersky Lab", in 2012 the viruses for Android accounted for almost 94% of all malicious programs for mobile phones. So, please, be attentive and don’t install any software that you haven’t passed security check, especially if it concerns you back accounts or any valuable personal data. Just like it was said in one commercial: the illness is easier to prevent than to cure.

Author’s Info

This post is written by Kate Merzlova, a tech writer from Intellectsoft, a team of professionals delivering high quality mobile application development services. To find out more about our business mobile solutions, visit our site or follow us on Twitter @Intellectsoft.