Highly organized Russian groups have transformed mobile hacking into an industrial scale business, a kind of "malware-as-a-service," complete with marketing affiliates, distributors and customer support. Ten such criminal enterprises are responsible for more than 60 percent of all Russian malware, and millions of dollars in
fraudulent SMS toll charges against end users' phone bills.
The details of the extent and sophistication of Russian malware, most of it so far targeted against Russian-speaking
Android phone users, is the result of a six-month long investigation called Operation Dragon Lady by
Lookout, a mobile security firm based in San Francisco. The company markets and sells security and antivirus apps to Android and iOS users and to business clients, to combat the same kind of problem uncovered by its investigation. Lookout researchers combined the results of Dragon Lady with three years of data collection on malware patterns in Russia.
