4 Cybercriminals from Vietnam arrested for using SMS malware to earn $100,000

Image Credits: Hanoimoi

Vietnam Police have arrested four individuals accused of stealing approximately $100,000 by infecting more than 100,000 mobile devices with a premium-rate SMS sending virus.

The suspects are identified as 23 year old Ha Xuan Tien, 24-year-old Nguyen Duc Luc, 25-year-old Nguyen Van Tu, 29-year-old Tran Ngoc Hai, according to Tuoitrenews.

The malicious applications which was used by suspects to infect users are said to be distributed via websites like "soundfest.com.vn", "clickdi.com". 

Once the malicious application infects a smart phone, the app will automatically send SMS messages to premium rate numbers.  Premium rate numbers allows the owner to earn money from incoming calls and SMS.

The victim will lose 15,000  Vietnamese Dong($0.71 in USD), after each message is sent from their device to these premium rate numbers.

Using this method, the cyber criminals manged to earn more than 2.1 Billion Vietnamese Dong($98,700 in USD) since late 2013.