It may also add grist to what has become an ongoing debate here, namely: What is the risk/reward ratio as mobile phones come to handle more and increasingly sophisticated financial transactions?

According to Kaspersky, a new malicious program for Symbian and written in Python has been foisted upon customers of an Indonesian carrier. The Trojan sends SMS messages that prompt the transfer of small amounts -- 45 cents to 90 cents -- from the infected user's account to that of the criminal. Small change, yes, but if the scam scales, the "result could be quite substantial," Kaspersky notes.

The modest takes are no accident. The theory, as put forth in everybody's favorite movie about sticking it to your employer, is that a whole bunch of missing change is less likely to be noticed than the loss of larger sums. The malware writers in this case were also helped by the carrier's desire to provide a simple method of transferring funds to a customer base that depends upon that feature, as is the case in less affluent nations. "This is useful when you need to communicate with someone who does not have enough money in their account," the Kaspersky analysts explain.

Simple, convenient . . . and apparently vulnerable.

Might the risk of such scams jump an ocean and land here in the States?