First Destructive Mobile Phone Virus In The Wild 265
gbjbaanb writes "eek! the BBC is reporting the first mobile phone virus that causes damage is out and about. The virus only works with the Symbian Series 60's OS (no, not the Smartphone) and spreads through an adapted copy of the legitimate Mosquitos game.
Once installed, a hidden program sends SMS texts to premium rate numbers.
That's not so bad, no doubt the premium rate numbers will be switched off soon but the worst is yet to come - "typically we see them in the wild then copycat ones come along soon after," said Sal Viveros, director of wireless security at McAfee."
bah... (Score:5, Funny)
he means after they are done writing and releasing the viruses, of course.
Wow! Where'd'ya find that? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it's the leading edge of a whole, new category of consumer devices! The single purpose device that only does one thing, but does it well!
My mobile has a virus.. (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot vs. Article (Score:5, Funny)
"First Destructive Mobile Phone Virus In The Wild"
"...a hidden program sends SMS texts to premium rate numbers."
Article:
"...text messages will still be sent, although not at premium rates."
"Mosquito's Trojan does not do any other damage..."
Does anyone verify that the slashdot article actually represents the real article?
Re:Bring on the Symbian/Sybian jokes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nope - "virus" is a broken anti piracy system (Score:4, Funny)
And that's why... (Score:5, Funny)
Clickity-click-click!
Re:Not quite as I'd have thought. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Not a virus (Score:2, Funny)
Malicious may have been a better word, but "destructive" like most adjectives is pretty much subjective.
If you think about it, malware is destructive if you incur a cost.. Either in time, money or both.
I'd consider this more "destructive" than a virus that, say, wiped out my address book, because that would only 'cost' me about 20 seconds to resync to my PC. This would cost me the many hours and hassles to reverse the charges on my bill. Go ahead and dispute a charge with Verizon or Sprint and see how much fun it is.
They once billed me for a 27 hour call on my cell phone, which was absolutely ridiculous since it's battery is lucky to hold up for 45 minutes and it only uses battery power, even when plugged in.. The manual says its so I wont get electrocuted by mains power, which is equally silly, since it charges from a wall-wart that delivers a whole 300ma at 12V. Truly a piece of craptastic engineering.
Where was I? Oh yeah, cell tech sucks and I've yet to complete a conversation without the call being dropped. "Can you hear me now" my ass.
I hope we see more of these. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:bandwith is not necessary to be annoying (Score:5, Funny)
Just a second! Sun's been telling me to use Java because it's secure! [sun.com]. Certainly, we all know from reading /. that only Microsoft is vulnerable to these 'trojan horse' attacks because their software is poorly written!
Are you telling me that Java is poorly written? Or is there really no defense against tricking users into loading and running programs (as most Windows "viruses" of the past year or so have spread).
If that's true, then phones shouldn't be able to run software at all!
Re:bah... (Score:5, Funny)
**passes tinfoil hat***
Oblig. Garfield... (Score:2, Funny)
Garfield: I can?
John: I wasn't giving you permission!
Garfield: too late, I already broke something...