First Mobile Phone Virus Discovered 240
CHaN_316 writes "News.com.au is running an article about the First Mobile Phone Virus Discovered. The virus 'called Cabir - appears to have been developed by an international group specialising in creating viruses which try to show "that no technology is reliable and safe from their attacks"... until now it has had no harmful effect.' Cabir infects the Symbian operating system, and spreads via bluetooth. Great... lets see when we can download the world's first mobile phone anti-virus!"
Nokia 3410 anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes progress is not an advantage.
Dupe - No one reads DaddyPants email? (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw this was a dupe when it was "In The Mysterious Future" and emailed daddypants, but it *STILL* got posted. WTF??
I don't get it... (Score:4, Interesting)
This goes along with a BBC story... (Score:5, Interesting)
So... adding a little danger to the thrills of Unprotected Toothing...
Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I did. It got rejected in approximately a half-hour.
This, on the other hand, is a duplicate of a story that's still on the front page.
I can forgive the occasional dupe when it's a dupe from three days or more, but... still on the front page?! You've got to be kidding me.
High scores (Score:5, Interesting)
timothy - 114
michael - 104
CmdrTaco - 80
Hemos - 32
CowboyNeal - 22
pudge - 12
Way nicer than they could have been. (Score:2, Interesting)
There was(is) a bug on some of the US based sms GSM handsets (may be worse, but I only know the US).... The bug was that sending a malformed binary SMS message to a specific SMSC would hang the queue for the device.... you just wouldn't get any more SMS messages to your phone (until they went in and poked it out by hand)
You should have exploited the fact that all phones now use SMS, and most have either Symbian or Java... Written a propagation routine that read the addy book, propogated to all of those, and then sent the sender a malformed message of death!
The user would get a message from his buddy saying "install", and after he did, he;d be fucked before he could stop it/call his friends. MUCH higher propagation levels no?
Second better plan to the one they did:
Trogan a java game (since you can get at the code so easy)... put up some services on various operator networks.... like Voda Live, or the 88k different ringtone providers etc... and then just have all infected phones text their premium rate servies all day long.
Not my game plan personally, but IT IS COMING! all the things I said today can happen TODAY!
Re:It's a PHONE, dammit... (Score:3, Interesting)
As a matter of fact, I do. As the parent poster put it, "It's a PHONE, dammit!" Not all of us want a super-convergence device that allows us to play games, send email, calculate our taxes, photograph our pets, etc. Believe it or not, some of us just want a damn phone and that's it.
Personally, I expect my phone to be an appliance and I treat it as such. When I look for a phone, I only look at a few things: 1)battery life, 2)size, 3)silent ringer, 4)what kind of signal does it get, and 5)can it do SMS (the only phone luxury I rely on)? I could give a rat's ass whether or not I can install that really cool new puzzle game all my friends are playing, and all of the functions can be provided from the manufacturer. I just want to make and receive calls anywhere, anytime. It's a PHONE .