RSSMobile Phone Virus Surfaces in US
By Ed Oswald | Published February 21, 2005, 11:57 AM
The world's first virus that specifically targets mobile phones has made an appearance in the United States. Called Cabir, the virus initially appeared in the Philippines about eight months ago. Since then, it has spread to twelve countries and could eventually threaten a significant portion of the 1.5 billion cell phone users worldwide.
"It's interesting (the Cabir variant) has now been found in the United States, but it's not the end of the world," said Mikko Hypponen, director of Finnish anti-virus research company F-Secure. He explained that the biggest impact of the virus is draining cell phone batteries.
The virus originally appeared in a technology gadget store within two cell phones in the store's window, leading researchers to believe that a passer-by infected the two phones by using Bluetooth. The virus then spread to the store owner's phone, and Hypponen said it was likely other phones in the area were infected, although no reports have been received.
The virus spreads slowly because it uses the Bluetooth capabilities of the phone to propagate itself. Thus, users without the Bluetooth feature will not easily contract the virus. Also, a user must restart his phone for the virus to take hold.
Mobile phone makers are responding to Cabir, as well as other future mobile viruses, by offering anti-virus software on new handsets. However, the virus threat will continue to increase, especially as phones converge around common operating systems like today's computers.
This is old news - the "virus" has been around for a long time. HOWEVER, some qualification is needed on this article...
1) Cabir can only infect mobile phones running Nokia's Series 60 software (based on SymbianOS).
2) Cabir can only be spread using Bluetooth.
3) The recepient will have to conciously accept the Bluetooth transfer in order for Cabir to spread to their phone.
As a result, it's not a serious threat in the same way that email based viruses are. It's also not particularly damaging, and very easy & quick to recover from.
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As phones now can receive emails with attachments, are viruses something we can look forward to in the future?
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Of course viruses have started to spread to phones, it was virtually inevitable. I think that yes it will be tough to contract this virus from a phone but taking into consideration that people get curious and may open an attachment without knowing what it is... then again many people are starting to get web enabled phones and phones with bluetooth technology, i myself have something quite close. i am thirteen and i am one of those people who do get those types of messages. To tell the truth I knew nothing about this cell-phone virus all along, i an i am a big cell-phone user. And another fact of this outrage; i never turn my phone off, it always stays on. It specifically says that you must turn your phone off and turn it back on again to activate the virus. So my side is very clear to see, the virus won't serve a big threat to the American society.
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Since its first "proof-of-concept" variant appeared, Cabir.A, until the present Cabir.H and Cabir.I, this virus has been reported in 13 countries, showing that even if its spreading is slow, that doesn't mean it's negligible. Sure, it doesn't spread by sending itself to all the people in your address book, it spreads by toothing any symbian smartphone in its reach, but as people have opened .pif, .exe and .vbs files in emails in the past, they're probably accepting and installing cabir' SIS files as I write.
Some guy called Freakadget has started a blog on mobile security, and you can get the facts AND the solutions for Cabir and subscribe to RSS alerts on mobile threats on this new mobile security blog, http://securemyphone.blogspot.com
Kudos to him, and to anyone that helps the fight against mobile viruses.
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