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First Cell Phone Virus Discovered
On: Tue June, 15 2004 @ 10:26 GMT
It had to happen sooner or later. Just to show that it could be done, thus
demonstrating another vulnerability in part of our infrastructure, some
clever
programmers have create a virus that can infect cell phones and other
mobile
devices. This virus is being tested in labs but is not yet "in the wild."
original news source:
_Cabir Virus First To Attack Cell Phones_
(http://wireless.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_title=Cabir-Virus-First-To-Attack-Cell-Phones&story_id=25403&ca
tegory=wlssecurity)
A new virus called "Cabir" is winning notoriety as the first to attack
mobile operating systems. The creators of Cabir have not designed the worm
to
propagate on a massive scale, but rather to demonstrate that cell phones
and PDAs
can be infected by malicious code.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
To be attacked and infected, your mobile phone or PDA has to run the
_Symbian_ (http://www.symbian.com/) operating system, have the _BlueTooth_
(http://www.bluetooth.com/) wireless technology enabled, the user must
launch the
file that is transmitted, and ignore two messages warning that the source
of
the software is unknown. That may sound tough and unlikely, but since so
many
computer users in the world are obviously still clicking on email
attachments
it is dangerous enough. Fortunately this virus was first given to antivirus
labs and wireless experts instead of being released into the public. The
makes affected include Nokia, Siemens, Sony, and Ericcson. The good news is
that
this version does not seem to actually do anything really harmful -except
run
down the device's battery by constantly scanning for other devices to
infect. The visible effects on phones are these:
* Displays a message (see the "Technical Details" section), then copies
itself to a directory on the phone. (This directory is not visible, by
default.)
* Runs from this directory when the phone is restarted, so that it
continues
to work even if the files are deleted from the APPS directory.
The removal process seems rather "involved" for the casual user.
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