It's always worth monitoring the developments in the commercial mobile spying apps space. In particular, the inevitable customerization/customization of their services.
A shady vendor of such applications, is attempting to migrate from the mass market model of competing vendors, by offering its potential customers to ability to generate their own .sis files, for the spying app targeting Symbian 0S 9 platform. The DIY features also include the ability to self sign their own certificates. The price tag? A hefty price tag of £3000, and no refunds offered.
What's their true motivation behind the release of the DIY generation tool? It appears that they are primarily interested with scaling their business operations, allowing potential resellers the option to automatically generate the spying apps. Although the self-signing certificate option is interesting, mobile malware authors continue abusing Symbian Foundation's certificate signing process, surprisingly, by using bogus company names with no public reference of their existence.
Thanks to the improving monetization models for mobile malware (e.g. calling/SMSing premium rate numbers), mobile malware authors are only starting to realize/abuse the potential of the micro payments market segment.
Related posts on mobile malware:
The future of mobile malware - digitally signed by Symbian?
Commercial spying app for Android devices released
iHacked: jailbroken iPhones compromised, $5 ransom demanded
New Symbian-based mobile worm circulating in the wild
New mobile malware silently transfers account credit
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Transmitter.C Mobile Malware in the Wild
Proof of Concept Symbian Malware Courtesy of the Academic World
Commercializing Mobile Malware
Mobile Malware Scam iSexPlayer Wants Your Money
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6th SMS Ransomware Variant Offered for Sale
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This post has been reproduced from Dancho Danchev's blog. Follow him on Twitter.
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