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Viruses Find A New Host: Cell Phones

Posted by timothy on from the call-all dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A NYTimes article (free reg) describes the dangers posed by viruses as 3G and text-messaging become more common, inluding an incident in '01 where numerous phones in Japan began calling 110 (equivalent to 911 in the U.S.). Wired mentions 13M vulnerable phones in Japan alone." (And that was a few years ago.)

5 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. More gadgets = more complication by NineNine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is inevitable. As people buy more and more stupid gadgets, their lives become geometrically more complicated. Personally, I have a cell phone and I use it for... making telephone calls! No stupid wireless web, messaging, taking pictures, or whatever in the hell people are doing with phones these days. You want the stupid gadgets? You're going to pay for it up front in cash, you're going to pay in time to figure everything out, and you're going to pay in headaches. Rarely are new technologies worth the trouble. A computer is good in it's most basic uses, and a phone is good. All of those stupid ipods/pdas/superphones/etc aren't worth it.

  2. Re:This is only going to get worse by robogun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Verizon (the one US provider I am familiar with) already does this, but you have to initiate the install (*861 or something as I recall). However, after the last update, all of a sudden I couldn't get the reception I used to, and I had to punt that phone for Cingular. As I remember, Verizon was having a real problem with text spam.

  3. Monocultures by heironymouscoward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Modern IT works like a natural system.

    As soon as there is a host that can be infected, in quantities of relative interest, viruses will evolve that can parasite it.

    Mobile phones are safe only so long as they are too stupid to act as carries for self-reproducing code.

    A good reason IMHO to spurn "smart" phones.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature
  4. How did they get this virus? by ifwm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What kind of signs should we be looking for, like when you tell someone not to open .exe's. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Also, isn't all of the traffic on cell phones documented? Shouldn't the companies be able to find the culprit fairly easily?

  5. They already do surveilance on mobile phones... by Von+Helmet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's been a couple of murderers and rapists and the like in the UK lately who have been caught based on mobile phone records. A murder trial - two young girls, very nasty - that's currently taking place involves the evidence that one of the victim's mobile phones was switched off outside the suspect's house the evening that the girls went missing.

    It's all fairly simple stuff at this stage, though it's kinda the stuff we've been seeing in films for years and scoffing at on the basis that it's "so unrealistic". Just the idea of being able to track where a phone signal for a particular phone number is coming from, and tying that to GPS and the like.

    There's also the idea that they keep track of what you talk about on the phone - they start recording if you say bomb or president or whatever, that kind of thing.

    It is only going to get worse though, as you say. When phones start doing more interesting stuff, there'll only be more for them to watch you do...