Have you been noticing recently that your mobile phone bill is higher than normal? Perhaps you have been wondering who made those extra calls to numbers you have never heard of? If that is the case, you could have very well been attacked by a Trojan Virus.
It seems that hackers are no longer happy creating viruses just for computers, and are now busy programming different types of Trojans to send to mobile handsets.
Mobile Trojans are programmes which are designed to expose all of the information within your handset, and can worm their way into your phone when you click open a text or download an mp3 song from online. Other ways that they can enter your phone is via Bluetooth, USB ports and online browsing.
Trojans can steal your address phone book or send a nasty SMS to all your phone contacts. Other Trojans are just built to freeze and delete all information from mobile. Some are even worse and could run you up a massive phone bill without you even knowing about it.
The most recent Trojan viruses have been floating around the Indian mobile industry. Once the virus has entered the phone, it will then start dialling premium rate telephone numbers such as adult dating, horoscopes, gambling tips etc) without the owner even knowing about it. These expensive services can cost upto £2.00 per minute in the UK and as much as $5 per minute in the US.
Another reported Trojan is the SymbOS.Sendtool which was created specifically for all Nokia phones, and spreads via Bluetooth to all other Bluetooth devices in the area.
It is estimated that around 250 different types of Trojan viruses are floating around, and handset manufacturers are working hard to try and prevent such attacks. Nokia have released a piece of software which you can download and help secure the data on your handset. Blackberry are also reported to be working on offering more advanced anti virus features on their newer models. However, some security analysts believe that mobile phone viruses will turn out to be a bigger problem than with viruses created for Windows PC computers.
Good news for non-GPRS phone users though as these handsets are far less likely to be attacked because Trojans require a certain amount of memory to function (about 160 bytes) and attack mostly JAVA-enabled phones.
Commonly known phone viruses
Cabir: Attacks phones which are running on Symbian OS. When the virus infects the phone, it displays the message Caribe on the screen and every time the phone is switched on. the virus will then attempt to spread to other nearby phones via Bluetooth Signals.
Skulls:This is a Trojan virus, which once infected into you phone, will seek to replace all desktop icons with images of a skull. All handset applications are frozen and rendered useless.
Duts: This is the first known virus for the PocketPC platform and attempts to infect all files which are larger than 4096 bytes ( the important ones!) in a phone’s directory.
Comwar: Attacks only devices running under OS Symbian Series 60. Spreads by creating a random file name and is sent via Bluetooth to unsuspecting nearby handsets.
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Sarah 09.19.08 at 1:44 pm
yikes! This is terrifying!