Mobile botnets are on the rise and cybercriminals are using the Google Cloud Messaging service as a conduit for sending data from command-and-control servers to malware, a new report says.
In its latest IT Threat Evolution report, Kaspersky Lab said the third quarter was "undoubtedly the quarter of mobile botnets," as cybercriminals tried to improve the ways they manage their networks of infected Android devices.
The latest weapon in criminals' arsenal is GCM, which enables them to send short messages in the JSON format to instruct malware on Android devices. JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is an open standard format that uses human-readable text to transmit data from a server to Web applications.
GCM is being used to communicate with the most widespread SMS Trojans, Kaspersky said in the report released last week. SMS Trojans are a common form of mobile malware that sends text messages to premium-rate phone services. The charges, which are not easily recovered, show up later on the victim's wireless phone bill.
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