At least nine credit unions were subject to a mobile phone phishing attack that sought to lure credit union members into giving up their financial information to fraudsters. The attack both speaks to the appeal of mobile banking as well as the pressing need to continue to develop its security.

The thieves launched the attack using downloadable applications that they wrote and branded with logos from the financial institutions, which included a number of banks as well as credit unions. They launched the applications on Google's Android mobile phone platform that Google is using as the operating system for its own phone and that a number of different cellular phone networks have offered on their own phones as well.

The applications were all developed by a person or group calling itself "09Droid" and contained the phrase "happy banking" on the summary statement that each application uses to advertise itself to potential users.