Trojan virus listens in on Android phone conversations

A trojan virus that has the ability to spy on phone conversations is threatening smartphones and other mobile devices running Google's Android mobile operating system, a computer security firm said. Computer Associates’ Dinesh Venkatesan said the new malware “walks an additional mile" as it has the capability to record the telephone conversations the infected phone is making. "[It] records the conversation itself in ‘amr’ format. Also, it has got many other malicious activities that we have seen in many of the earlier malware incidents targeted for Android platform," Venkatesan said in a blog post. Once the malware is installed in the victim device, it drops a “configuration file" that contains key information about the remote server and several other parameters. During the conversation, the Trojan stores the recorded call in a directory called "shangzhou/callrecord" in the external (SD) card. “As it is already widely acknowledged that this year is the year of mobile malware, we advice the smartphone users to be more logical and exercise the basic security principles while surfing and installing any applications," said Venkatesan. Several other malware that target the Android operating system have been reported recently, such as a fake antivirus spyware and a malware that steals mobile information and sends it to a central server. —JMT/TJD, GMA News