MOBILE PHONE VIRUSES
ON THE INCREASE. . .but anti-virus firms find solution
By Basil Okafor
Monday, April 18, 2005
The number of viruses infecting mobiles rose last month,
according to research. A total of eight viruses, both new
strains and variants, emerged and one malicious program, called
Cabir, was found in a 17th country.
The trend continued in the first two weeks of April with the
discovery of the Mabir, Fontal and Hobbes viruses.
But industry experts are playing down the threat from the
malicious programs saying that users have to do a lot of things
wrong to fall victim to them.
Growing threat
Most of the mobile viruses, worms and trojans are aimed at
Symbian’s operating system, particularly its Series
60 version, largely because it is used on a majority of smartphones.
“The more handsets we see with a common open operating
system, the more skill the virus developers have and the more
damage they can do,” said Tiago Alves, spokesman for
mobile chip designer Arm.
Symbian Viruses
Some of the viruses will stop a phone working if they are
installed, others try to spread from one phone to another
via the Bluetooth short-range radio service.
Getting infected with any of them could mean that users lose
phone numbers and contact information that they do not store
in any other place than their handset.
“Most people do not take back-ups of the data and software
they have on their phones,” said Marit Doving, spokeswoman
for Symbian.
Ms Doving said that Symbian had been expecting viruses written
to attack its software for some time.
She said the company had been working on ways to combat the
malicious programs for years so that the phone industry did
not suffer the same problems viruses have caused the PC industry.
Many computer anti-virus firms now produce software that can
run on handsets.
Educating users to be responsible was a key part of this,
she said.
“What’s important now is to make the normal consumer
more aware of how he and she can use their telephone in a
way that they do not get these problems,” she said.
Becoming infected by a mobile virus was still quite difficult,
said Ms Doving.
For instance, to fall victim to the Cabir worm users must
agree twice to install it and ignore at least one warning
message.
Although Cabir can only spread very slowly via Bluetooth it
has now been found in 17 countries. Newspaper reports say
that mobile phones used by some cab drivers in Sydney are
infected with it. –BBC
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