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Security firm Sophos issued a warning Thursday about e-mails purportedly offering free iPhone games. The missives profess to feature a free game for the smartphone, but the only thing those who download the attachment receive is malware designed to infect PCs running Windows.
The scam e-mails purport to include a file dubbed "Penguin.Panic.zip," a supposed version of the popular "Penguin Panic" motion-based iPhone app game, in which a cuddly Penguin jumps from one iceberg to another while avoiding falling icicles.
In the subject line, the hackers tout the file as "Virtual iPhone games!" or "Apple: The most popular game!", "Virtual iPhone toys!" and appeal to users to "Take a break!" or to "Beet (sic) my score! (7000 points)." However, the attached file, Troj/Agent-HNY, is a Trojan.
"It's a regular Trojan horse, spammed out via e-mail 
attachments. If you run it on your Windows PC it installs itself and tries to download further malware from the Net. Unlike some other Trojans it doesn't waste time with a celebrity theme or pretending to be a breaking news story -- instead it pretends to be a hot game for the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, told MacNewsWorld.
Infection Via iPhone
It's important to note that the malware does not infect the iPhone itself. Rather, it infects Windows PCs when the user downloads the attachment while checking e-mail on a computer, presumably expecting to load the game onto an iPhone after connecting the handheld to the PC. Sophos is not aware of any versions that will run on the Mac OS X operating system, the iPhone or other mobile devices.
"Why not Mac? Probably because the hackers believe they can be successful just infecting Windows -- which is, after all, what most malware authors concentrate on. There's no technical reason why they couldn't write a Mac version too -- but they clearly don't think it's worth the effort," said Cluley.
"The hackers are using an iPhone-related disguise in the hope that people will be tempted into running the program," he explained.
Perils of the Web
Although this latest Trojan does not execute on iPhones themselves, it uses the broad familiarity of the iPhone as bait, again underscoring hackers' proclivity to lure in victims using whatever will attract popular recognition, be it a hot phone or a scandalous fake video of a political candidate.
Popularity also rules when targeting platforms to infect -- they regularly set their sites on market-dominant Windows PCs. However, as smartphones become more popular, more sophisticated and more able to surf the "real" Web, the danger of cybercriminals manufacturing malware for them increases.
"The biggest weakness of the cell phone has been the inability to access the 'real Web,' cloistered instead in the mobile Web, having little functionality. The second problem has been the fragmentation of the technology, with hundreds of real-time operating systems. Those weaknesses, however, were the very things that made cell phones so unattractive to hackers," David Chamberlain, an In-Stat analyst told MacNewsWorld.
"There will definitely be more interest by the bad guys, though, as more people use cell phones to access the real Web, and more smartphones -- with their common operating systems -- will be in use. That weakness, however, has prevented the bad guys from showing much interest in cell phones," he continued.
In-Stat expects the number of smartphones in use to increase more than 50 percent over the next five years. The research firm calculates that more than 200 million smartphones will be sold in 2012 alone, an increase of over 40 percent from 2008. That will make the devices an appealing target for hackers.
"Viral attacks on operating systems is nothing new. We've seen it on other operating systems, whether it be Symbian, Windows Mobile -- which gets it all the time -- and Blackberry, so this is not new. We are not facing a brand-new threat," Ramon Llamas, an IDC analyst, told MacNewsWorld.
In some ways, the standardization of phone operating systems is a hacker's dream, explained Chamberlain.
"Think about it: For years, we've been hearing, 'There are no Apple viruses because there aren't enough Apple computers to make it worthwhile for the hackers.' Cell phones have been incredibly fragmented with hundreds of different proprietary real-time operating systems. Somebody would have to write 100 or more variants to infect all of them. You get a big population of a single operating system, and you've got a target," he added.
What's In It for the Criminal
One possible reward for cybercriminals able to distribute such malware: The e-mail addresses stored on the handsets, according to Chamberlain.
"This malware is largely a way to steal live e-mail addresses and turn the computer into an outlet for spam messages. In that regard, perhaps they're looking for access to other phone numbers and e-mail addresses to use for spam. The other things might be for personal information such as bank accounts and passwords and other financial rip-offs," he pointed out.
However, smartphone-targeting criminals may also go after something other than lucre: good, old-fashioned bragging rights. If a hacker developed a viable bit of malware for the iPhone and released it into the wild where it was able to infect many of the devices, that person would also have substantial street cred within the hacker community, according to Llamas.
"A lot of it is the thrill of being able to say 'I took down or crippled or put a virus out there and it caused mayhem and destruction.' There really is no financial or monetary gain. There is notoriety, but that doesn't translate into the dollars. It is the thrill of causing problems for someone else," he posited.
Beyond that, putting out this sort of malicious software could be an effort to test the support system surrounding a device, Chamberlain noted.
"Perhaps [the] infection is only the opening volley. You make an inconsequential attack and wait to see what the response is. If the good guys spot it and react, you know you need to find another way in. This almost makes you wonder what else might be on your iPhone that hasn't been detected," he theorized.
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