First True Mobile Virus in the Wild
The era than many professionals have been waiting to see start, as we are now coming toward the end of the spyware/malware half-decade, although it will take at least the next half to finish up. Now we move into the next stage in malware evolution; it is coming to those well connected pocket devices - mobile phones.
Now it’s been along time in the coming, there have been numerous attempts at PoC’s in the not distant past, but finally someone has released a virus in the wild. This one is for Symbian (one of the more technically sophisticated phone operating systems) and infects other phones via MMS messages.
As is often the case with malware in general, this particular program requests the user for their permission to run. Once again we simply need to inform users that they should not simply click yes on a pop up message just because it’s appeared. For those who don’t know: you’re phone should not prompt you to install software unless you told it to. If it does, something irregular is happening.
It is true that this virus affects a very specific subset of mobile devices, but this is more of a proof of concept release. Now that it has been done successfully it will not be long until copycat developments are released. There will be increasing focus in this area now for years to come, I wonder how long it will take for 1) phone’s to be firmware upgradeable for free, 2) for anti-virus groups start to release anti-virus programs for mobile devices.
Virus creators 1 - 0 Stupid users