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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!"
It had to happen sooner or later, with people predicting the cell phone will be your next computer.
I guess Series 60 phone owners should be thankful that it just drains battery life. What if the worm sent 80,012 text messages to everyone in your contact list! Imagine the cell network congestion and billing chaos that would ensue... Lets hope cell phone manufacturers start tweaking their phone OSes to prevent that kind of disaster in the future!
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
I'd just like to say that this is why it's still nice to have a phone with relatively limited features - well, that and it's a Motorola (T720). I don't have to worry about the Bluetooth stuff, and I don't even have web access activated on it.
Also, according to the SARC article linked - this worm will attack any bluetooth device that it finds in it's range - not just phones - SARC uses a printer as an example, but what about those nice bluetooth mice/keyboards and PDAs, etc?
They have an image of the phone with the message displayed on it too.
Bluetooth should be turned off out of the box. If an end-user is smart enough to know they want Bluetooth, they probably won't get hit with this attack.
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
...better yet, a dialer that propagates itself and then sends out pre-recorded sales calls. This may sound crazy now, but will it sound crazy three years from now?
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Those who fail to learn from history, are condemned to repeat it.
Hate me!
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.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
No.. that would make it a trojan.
The definition of a worm isn't to do with whether or not it needs a user to run it - its just about whether it propgates via a network by itself rather than having users do the spreading.
A virus hides itself in other executables and runs itself via proxy with the user not realising it. But it gernerally requires the user to do the distribution (generally without realising it).
A trojan is simply a program which is malicous but pretends to be something else. If it happens to spread itself when run that doesn't make it a worm or a virus, but just a self spreading trojan. It would be closer to a trojan-slash-worm than a virus.
I.O.U One Sig.
``Oh look, Johnny sent me a new ring tone''
ZAP!
Until software companies will devote serious time to making sure their products aren't vulnerable like this, we will continue to see these types of monkey business.
Actually the difference between viruses and worms is that worms are standalone programs while viruses need to infect other executables to be effective.
I imagine that because of the cellphone frenzy there soon will be as much advertising (spam) in that medium as there is on the internet. Its just too big and too attractive a market to miss. And as cellphones get more and more features crammed into them - there will be viruses, worms, dialers. And they will be just as common.
Remind me to bring an infected phone to the movie theater every time I go.
So this is, like, the first real-world application of Bluetooth? A virus vector? You mean it's not just useless marketing hype-ware after all?!!! They are right, you learn something new every day!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
> Sure, the difference isn't that big a deal, but to most people, there isn't any > real difference between Linux and Unix...
Especially if you work for SCO!
My rights don't need management.
I guess now the anti-virus software people now have themselves a new market to penetrate. I guess windows boxes were not enough to maintain their business model.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
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.
May the Maths Be with you!
That is the sound of inevitability...
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
Really, this does not prove anything. It doesn't exploit any weakness in the system and very easy to avoid.
I am not sure how many of people who have posted before actually OWN series 60 device, but let me assure you that it's not as simple as accepting somebody's bluetooth transfer.
First of all, you must have bluetooth always on and your device available to all, which is really bad idea considering that it eats your battery much faster. Battery life of the series 60 devices is pretty small as is. Having bluetooth on is sure way to kill it further.
Second, you will have to go through few steps of actually INSTALLING unsigned application. This is VERY intrusive.
Third, this thing does not auto startup. So, when your device is drained off battery, it won't run by itself as far as I can see.
All in all, very poor attempt to create a malware for Series 60. I am sure you can get much higher propagation by installing an autoexec worm inside of S60 warez releases.
Other avenue to look into is malformed MMS message that does buffer overrun and allows to execute arbitrary code. Now this would be a real baddy because you will be infected as soon as you open a message.
Nice try, but no cake.
-- shortcut - the longest distance between two points.
It has to be assumed that any system open to the general public, can be expected to come under hostile attack from hackers/spammers/criminals/terrorists. All hardware and software deployed in the field needs to be examined carefully for this. It is even more critical when you have a "monoculture" of HW/SW, since one exploit compromises the whole system.
History has shown time and time again, hackers will expend a great deal of effort to compromise any accessible system even if just for the heck of it.
My rights don't need management.
...but also other Symbain OS phones like Sony Ericsson P800/P900 and Motorola a920/a925.
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.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks