New Virus Bombards Mobile Phones With Junk Calls

Wolfe writes: "We knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened ... I can't wait until our lives and households are completly wired and some jerk sends a virus to my toaster or hacks the coffee machine." Similarly, crovax writes: "A new virus that spams mobile phone users is out. Checkout the story here. This virus that has only been reported in Spain infects a computer then starts generating random mobile phone numbers." I'd hate to be on the Washington Beltway when this hits the D.C. area!

Comments

Re:It's time for a neologism

[orpheus]

I absolutely agree that its important to make the distinction between virus, worm, trojan, etc., it would cut down on confusion, and encourage more background understanding of computers in general.

However, I think it's funny that you suggest "pathogens". In medical school, we had the same problem with distinctions that were generally important (bacteria, protozoa, viruses, worms, other parasites, etc.), but which could be cumbersome when speaking generically. 'Pathogen' wasn't always appropriate either (the same species can be a pathogen in one site, and normal flora in another).

Do you know what we call them, collectively, in the hospital? Bugs.

"Hmmm... Computer bugs?" No, that's already taken...

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All right, who's the wise guy who /.'d the New England Journal of Medicine website tonight? It's up, but it's boggy as hell.

Slashdot needs to be more carefull

[geoffeg]

"New Virus Bombards Mobile Phones With Junk Calls"

No, it bombards their cell phones with SMS (short for Short Message Service) messages, not phone calls. I wish slashdot article posters would pay more attention to what they are typing and read more carefully.

Geoff

Re:Slashdot needs to be more carefull

[Nicolas MONNET]

I have some good news for you. The FCC has ordered that the billing system will be changed to the way the enlightened countries outside the US have it. You pay for the calls you make, not the ones you receive. :-) We always had that system here and it means that alot of people carry a cell phone only to be called on and hardly ever use it to call with. This keeps the monthly bill down alot.

Well actually most people here (France) have a cell phone to call other cell phones. Calling a cell phone from a land line is a complete rip off ($0.50 / minute?) whereas calling nation wide or cell phones FROM a cell phone is very cheap, esp. with "forfait", which gets as low as $0.10 or something a minute (I have 240 min a month for $30, but I don't even use half of it).

Effect on pricing structure?

[Matt2000]

This will be interesting as most cell phone pricing packages charge you for an email message received on your phone whether you want it or not. What will happen when they let through 300 messages from a worm cruising around and you get a $150 phone bill.

Spam from these sorts of viruses is irritating when you're on a flat rate internet connection, it's gonna be a serious issue when you pay per message.

Hotnutz.com - Funny

Re:Effect on pricing structure?

[nstrug]

No - receiving an SMS message is free - just like receiving a phone call. You only pay for outgoing calls. I think it is only in the US where you pay for incoming calls.

Night fever night fever!

[Halster]

I hope the people involved in developing the "wired home" and associated technologies take note of this.

I can imagine it. The Saturday Night Fever Virus. It triggers at about 11:00pm on a Saturday. All your lights start flashing on and off, your stereo starts playing a BeeGees track and your toaster burns some toast (for that authentic nightclub-smoke atmosphere).

Or even better... the ILoveYou@Home virus. Your bed starts vibrating, the lights dim, the stereo starts playing some romantic music, then it rings your neighbor and starts the same thing at their house! ;)


"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47

PhoneSpam your Friends and Enemies!

[FFFish]

THIS PAGE lets you send SMS messages to anyone you care to.

One wonders if they're harvesting spam-able phone numbers...

(hit Google and type "send sms message cell phone" and you'll get another few sites that let you do the same thing)

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Trivial to implement for Fido phones, at least.

[Christopher Thomas]

Some time ago, when a friend of mine had a cell phone and I didn't, I'd send him text messages via a web page helpfully provided by Fido (the company selling us the service).

This was very useful, but is trivially easy to spam via scripts. My friend even wrote such a script, to forward email from his account to his phone (before purchasing phone email service).

It would only take one or two knowledgeable people saying "hey, that's neat!" to do that here in Toronto, and I'm sure Fido isn't the only company set up this way.

It has to know your/an email-2-mobile gateway

[Kris_J]

This thing can't just magically make messages appear on your phone. In fact, just because your PC catches the virus doesn't mean you'll get the messages.

At the moment it targets one specific email-2-mobile gateway. Many gateways have opt-in stuff and passwords so that human spammers can't abuse the system. This virus is simply exploting an open gateway, like that nntp gateway demon used to run.

Melissa and the love bug got faxed to people through email-2-fax gatways (we one run at work, so I know what they're like). I have a few e-mail addresses for my mobile. This latest thing is an inevitable variation on an old theme. Nothing to see here, move along now.

(That said, if I'd received "I LOVE YOU" on my mobile I would have thought it funny enough to take a photo and post it somewhere on the web ;)

Anyone else notice the two articles contradict?

[gavinhall]

Posted by serpens:

The articles say different things. It looks like another journalist wasn't listening to what was being said.

The Yahoo article:
They also said the attack is relatively benign, as it does not destroy computer files but merely delivers a message disparaging the Spanish telephone company Telefonica.

The MSNBC story:
The virus has a nasty payload, as well - it attempts to delete all files on the victim's hard drive and performs several other operations that makes restoration difficult.


Do journalists get anything right anymore???

serpens`

It's time for a neologism

[/]

The virus type, known as a worm, targets phones

This is just plain wrong; viruses are viruses and worms are worms and never the twain shall meet. What we need to do is start using a general word like "pathogens" to describe all communicable software nasties. If people then want to get specific and say what sort of pathogen it is, then that's fine, but to treat "viruses" as a category encompassing worms and trojan horses and the sort is absurd.

It doesn't need to be a virus (et al) to do this

[Kris_J]

The phone-spamming bit is the payload. The messages sent to the SMS gateway are virus/worm/trojan free. And there's no real need to make it a virus - that's just one way of distributing the message. Another would be a spam system that makes the return address a random [whatever]@mobile.att.net (or similar) address, different for each e-mail. Then when they bounce back, or people reply to them, they get send to a Random Phone. This was how demon's NNTP gateway was abused.

Heck, all you really need to do is start posting messages to Usenet with a random @mobile.att.net (or similar) address each time and other people will spam the phones for you...

Phone Virus!

[the_other_one]

This is scary. We could all be wiped out by a disease spread by a dirty telephone. I'm going to hire a telephone sanitizer right away.