Subject: [NEXTEL-1] A Useless Cure For A Harmless Smartphone Virus

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 00:40:44 -0400

A Useless Cure For A Harmless Smartphone Virus

Contributed by Mike Masnick on Monday, June 21 2004 @ 1:11am

Last week news quickly spread about a so-called smartphone worm that had
been "discovered." Of course, what most of the stories left out is that
you would have to be pretty stupid to actually get the worm. It seems
that, once again, the announcement of a vulnerability is just being used
by a company to get themselves more publicity, whether or not there's a
real risk. This time, an Australian anti-virus firm is claiming that
they're the first to come up with software to get rid of this nasty
threat, ignoring that plenty of others have pointed out how to get rid
of it if you're so stupid as to get it. In the meantime, over in South
Korea they seem to be preparing for a more serious phone virus outbreak,
as SK Telecom is now offering anti-virus software for phones. Of course,
it's unclear how the anti-virus program works. If no phone viruses
exist, the definition file must be pretty small.

techdirt.com

==============================================================================

Malware at large or anti-Virus PR?

Tuesday, June 15, 2004 02:55 PM
By Jim Hughes

Receive message from Nokia 3650?
Yes/No

Installation security warning. Unable to verify supplier. Continue
anyway?
Yes/No
Install Cabir?
Yes/No

Three little dialog boxes with similar wording to that shown above may
be the only things stopping people installing the latest attempt at a
Symbian virus Cabir, sure this is rather more labour intensive than the
usual "whoops, I clicked on an attachment" or "D'oh! I'm running
Outlook" but still some people will fall for it, and then attempt to
send this same worm to all the Symbian phones within 10m, so we're
talking about a worm with reproductive capabilities that need human
assistance, and a limited audience for it to infect. Not a big deal
really.

Ok, maybe I'm being a little cynical, but until these worms become truly
capable of self-propagation they are really not worth talking about,
unless one is deperate to sell snake oil anti virus software of course.

http://www.mobitopia.com/20040615.html#145507

=======================================================================================

Cure for phone virus

21jun04

AN AUSTRALIAN company says it has found a cure for the world's first
mobile phone virus.
The relatively harmless Cabir virus was detected in Europe and infects
the Symbian operating system used in several makes of mobiles and
propagates through Bluetooth wireless technology.

If the virus succeeds in penetrating the phone, it writes the
inscription Caribe on the screen and is then activated every time the
phone is turned on.

It is able to scan for phones that are also using Bluetooth and is able
to send a copy of itself to the first handset that it finds.
Brisbane company TSG Pacific chief executive Gavin Knight said although
the virus was relatively harmless, others would follow.

As far as he was aware the anti-virus software was the only one
available in the world. It will be available on the company's website
from today.

He said about 150,000 Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones that had
been sold in Australia since December 2002 were susceptible.

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,9908119%255E421,00.html

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