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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.)

2 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. 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
  2. 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?