Spying programs for mobile phones are likely to grow in sophistication and stealth as the business around selling the tools grows, according to a mobile analyst at the Black Hat conference on Friday.

Many of the spy programs on the market are powerful, but aren't very sophisticated code, says Jarno Niemela, a senior antivirus researcher for Finnish security vendor F-Secure, which makes security products for PCs and mobile phones.

But there is increasing evidence that money from selling the tools will create a stronger incentive for more accomplished programmers to get into the game, which could make the programs harder to detect, Niemela says.

Niemela says his prediction follows what has happened with the malware writers in the PC market. Many hackers are now in the business of selling easy-to-use tools to less technical hackers rather than hacking into PCs themselves.

One of the latest tools on the market is Mobile SpySuite, which Niemela believes is the first spy tool generator for mobiles. It sells for US$12,500 (NZ$15,812) and would let a hacker custom-build a spy tool aimed at several models of Nokia phones, Niemela says.

Posted by Annette King in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 09:23

PARIS: There is no storefront or corporate headquarters for Cybercrime Inc., but savvy salesmen in a murky, borderless economy are moving merchandise by shilling credit card numbers - "two for the price one."

"Sell fresh CC," promised one salesman who offered teaser credit card numbers for samples in New Jersey and Canada. "Visa, MasterCard, Amex. Good Prices. Many countries!!!!!"

Electronic crime is maturing, according to security experts, and with its evolution, clever criminals are adopting conventional approaches that reflect cold business sense - from supermarket-style pricing to outsourcing to specialists acting as portfolio managers, coders, launchers, miners, washers and minders of infected "zombie" computers.

"It's a remarkable development of a whole alternative business environment that's occurred over the last couple years," said Richard Archdeacon, a senior director of global services for Symantec, an Internet security company with 11 research centers around the world tracking crime trends. "What's been so astonishing is the speed with which it's developed and the effect with which the market has grown and matured."

In the United States alone, victims of reported Internet fraud lost $239 million in 2007, with average losses running about $2,530 per complaint recorded by a special Web-based hot line operated by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, a nonprofit corporation focusing on electronic crime.

The most common frauds were fake e-mail messages and phony Web pages and the crimes were organized from the United States, England, Nigeria, Canada, Romania and Italy, according to an FBI report issued last week.

Posted by Annette King in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 09:15