Security researchers at CA Security have identified new malware that surreptitiously records conversations on Android phones, the company wrote Monday on its official blog.
The new threat to devices running Google's Android mobile operating system is an advance on earlier Android Trojans examined by CA Security that unleash payloads which log incoming and outgoing call details and durations in a text file, according to researcher Dinesh Venkatesan.
"This Trojan is more advanced as it records the conversation itself in 'amr' format," Venkatesan said. "Also it [conducts] many other malicious activities that we have seen in many of the earlier malware incidents targeted for [the] Android platform."
In a series of figures representing stages of attack by the unnamed Trojan, CA Security demonstrates how the malware is disguised as a friendly app for download, and once installed by an unsuspecting user, "drops a 'configuration' file that contains key information about the remote server and the parameters."
Next, making a phone call triggers the payload, which CA Security said records the call and stores the audio file in a directory folder called "callrecord" within another called "shangzhou" in the phone's SDCard directory structure.
"As i is already widely acknowledged that this year is the year of mobile malware, we advise smartphone users to be more logical and exercise basic security principles while surfing and installing any applications," concludes Venkatesan in the blog post.