Worm Developed for Nokia Series-60 Phones

Tuxedo Jack writes "It had to happen. The first worm designed specifically for cellular phones has been developed, and Cabir appears to be a way of effectively killing Nokia Series-60 cellular phones via shortening the battery life due to scanning for nearby Bluetooth devices and propagating itself. This still relies on a user to open it, so hopefully that won't be many, and those that do must use a file manager to find and kill the worm. At least it isn't a dialer!"

Comments

Re:Yes, but how long until there is a dialer? Or..

[Dagny Taggert]

I would love to see a simpler phone without features like Bluetooth. This would eliminate some of this out of the box. I may be in the minority, but all I need to do on my cell phone is make phone calls.

Re:Dangerous Potential

[CommanderData]

I would agree that silently spreading could work to it's advantage. If you combine the two concepts with a time-bomb that causes the code to execute at a certain future date it could be even more of a problem. Every cell tower everywhere overloaded with messaging and calls on April 1st, 2005 for example.

Hello Drive by spamming!!!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Unscrupulous types will drive around the suburbs with bluetooth transmitters on the top of honda civics and old hiaces, broadcasting viagra apps into our phones while we eat.

E-marketers will place transmitters everywhere, including bins, bus seats and on signs in the middle of the desert so our phones never stop telling us about products that improve our lives.

We will all begin to recieve mysterious bills for calls we made to a premium rate talking clock number while we were asleep.

Our phones will broadcast our every move and spoken word to marketing agencies, who will happily charge us for a map of the route we took to work that morning, or for telling how good our
eloqution is.

Bluetooth porn spam will being blaring out of everyones mobile the minute that slightly dazed looking yuppie walks into the room with his brand new phone that he uses for browsing on the net and email and chat and buying stuff and everything!!!

This situation(commencing next week) will continue without pause, until, faced with users mass binning their mobiles, symbian forcefully create their own virus to patch the phone on the fly as no-one , apart from geeks, will have bothered to delete the patch.

You doubt me!?! You doubt my powers of foresight?!!

So do I, but I'm sticking with my series 40 phone just in case.

Re:Simple Fix

[Sven Tuerpe]

Bluetooth should be turned off out of the box.

What really will happen is this: some day somebody develops a killer application based on Bluetooth, something that implies fun. Handset manufacturers will happily add it to their products. Their usability tests will yield that Bluetooth must be enabled out of the box, or most users won't even notice the new killer app. So they will not only enable Bluetooth by default, but also firmly believe they have to do it this way.

Big potential for disaster.

[gnarled]

What happens when the newest worm automatically dials 911. The system would be absolutely swamped, cops would be running around because when someone dials 911 and hangs up they still have to call, many people that actually had an emergency would never get through. It would be a serious disaster.