Users of VKontakte social network are in danger of being duped into installing app that malicious code. Kaspersky Lab said VKontakte users data had been stolen. Thousands of Android users were affected.

Kaspersky Lab researchers said hackers had embedded the malicious code in the app, but users couldn’t notice the difference as it worked without any problems. Malicious app infected mostly Russian users. According to Kaspersky Lab research, hackers used the majority of stolen data for social media group promotion, without user’s knowledge. In this case it is very difficult for account owners to identify or notice data theft.

A new Android Trojan uses some clever techniques to silently subscribe victims to premium services. The threat is still under development, but it’s already capable of carrying out a wide range of tasks.

Cybercrooks can use the malware to send SMS messages, set a filter on incoming messages and calls, display ads, delete messages and call records, upload the HTML source code of specified webpages to a remote server, perform DDoS attacks, make outgoing calls, subscribe the victim to paid content, delete security apps, and export incoming messages based on instructions received from the command and control server. 

Like it or not, the means of communication our children use have changed drastically over the past decade. They are far less eager to call or meet each other, but are constantly available online in social networks.

When it comes to 11 to 14-year-olds, depending on what’s hip in their environment and, to some extent, the local legislation, your son or daughter would want to register a Facebook or Vkontakte account. Yet as a parent, you are the sole bearer of the responsibility over the way your child’s online life goes. The best way to conserve the connection to your kid while he/she starts traveling down the path to the world of the internet is to do something together. 

Now the main stream of data goes through the servers located in the USA. The President of Russia Vladimir Putin considers it necessary and important to place on the territory of Russia the servers of large national Internet resources that will protect the stored information.

This opinion he expressed today, on April 24, speaking at a meeting of the media forum in St. Petersburg, ITAR-TASS reported. "It is possible to do, but it takes time and capital investment," he said, adding that now the main stream of data goes through the servers located in the USA, where everything is controlled. "All that the Internet has emerged as a special project of the CIA and developing," Putin said. 

Over 2 million passwords for popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as Google and Yahoo accounts have been stolen and posted online, with Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki also featuring on the hitlist.

Internet security firm Trustwave exposed the extensive data hoard, saying in its blog that the responsible botnet – dubbed Pony – had harvested information from thousands of vulnerable computers on a global scale.

The information included login credentials, email addresses and passwords. In total, 1,580,000 website login credentials were stolen, alongside 320,000 email and 41,000 FTP accounts.