Slashdot Mirror
First Mobile Phone Virus Discovered
CHaN_316 writes "News.com.au is running an article about the First Mobile Phone Virus Discovered. The virus 'called Cabir - appears to have been developed by an international group specialising in creating viruses which try to show "that no technology is reliable and safe from their attacks"... until now it has had no harmful effect.' Cabir infects the Symbian operating system, and spreads via bluetooth. Great... lets see when we can download the world's first mobile phone anti-virus!"
Go ahead, answer it. I dare you!
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
... dupe dupe. dupe of url, url, url.
I for one welcome our viral cellular overlords.
{ring ring}
You've been haxx0red!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
...first mobile phone virus dupe story!
You must think in Russian.
Here it comes, SMS spam offering downloadable anti-virus software!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
So I just need to stay 15 feet away from everyone and I should be fine.
Kinda like a real virus.
This is why I love my Nokia 3410. It's too simple to get easily hacked.
Sometimes progress is not an advantage.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Ok, I would maybe accept the odd one or two dupes, but not if the same story has appeared only a few hours earlier.
this virus has an unknown effect: /. over and over! ;)
it submits stories to
Because embarrassments like this only give ammunition to the trolls.
Eh, why not, I've got some karma to burn...
I saw this was a dupe when it was "In The Mysterious Future" and emailed daddypants, but it *STILL* got posted. WTF??
Quick, close port 80!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
that no technology is reliable and safe from their attacks
Inherent in society is a certain bit of stupidity, mixed with skill, it's a dangerous and irritating rash that itches on the skin of the sane.
Why does this need to be pointed out? Ohh, right, because asshats such as these guys or others will write viruses that will exploit this weakness just because they can. Ahh yes, personal entertainment at the expense of others, it's our God given right!
I'm really sick of this. Not only the tard that write the real viruses and whatnot, but that leads to the fact that there can be dipshits such as these guys to say "ohh look world, here's a vulnerability." Do they feel they're helping anyone any more than the writers of the actual malicious code?
Presently here, but not there.
This duplicate story gets accepted and posted, while my story about Akamai claiming they got attacked gets rejected... sigh...
Hmmm.
And this is after subscribers email Dupe! notices!
That's what they get for not implementing Linux on their hardware. Everyone knows Linux is teh bomb, and that it is immune to virii due to the fact that Linus smiled upon it. When will they learn? Corporate, pointy-headed drones, they are, incapable of seeing the truth even when it smacks them in their pasty managerial conformist greed-centric open-source hating faces.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Update: 06/15 15:15 GMT by M: You may remember we mentioned this earlier today.
Helpfully yours
*bow*
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
So... adding a little danger to the thrills of Unprotected Toothing...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually it's not that. The first cell phone virus would have happened ages ago if 90% of cell phones used the same architecture and OS. Whatever system you give that dominance, it will always have people exploiting it (or poor configuration thereof).
Exercise your right not to vote. thinkoutside.org
Not nearly as bad as the virus I got from that public pay phone!
That shanker lasted a week!
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
I'll believe that when they infect my refrigerator. Oops, looks like they already got that week-old bottle of milk...darn...
Have you read my blog lately?
I know, I know. It is confusing and complicated. I myself didn't believe this was a dupe until I read the 65th post saying it was. To be honest, even then I was a little skeptical. So to be sure I read the next 20 posts. Sure enough they all agreed with the other 65 people: The story is a dupe.
But for some reason, I still wasn't 100% convinced. To be super sure, I took a strole down to my crime lab and ran a few tests. The results?
The framerate on Quake 3 is better when using the Radeon 9800 Pro compared to using a Voodoo 2.
I realized that these benchmark tests were getting me nowhere, so I quickly ran outside and stopped a few people on the street. After explaining the situation on slashdot, 3 people quickly walked away, 2 spit on me, and the last guy asked me for change so he could take the bus. I gave him 35 cents.
At this point I started panicing, as time is running out. I ran back inside read and yesterday's penny-arcade. What an eye opener... it dawned on me: NO ONE FUCKING CARES IF THIS STORY IS A DUPE. JESUS CHRIST, LEAVE IT ALONE AND MOVE ONTO THE NEXT STORY.
That is all.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
is the one that does a DOS on /. every time it infects a new phone.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Pretty often. This is /.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Bluetooth being insecure isn't exactly news (or repeated news, for that matter). A lot of the first generation blue tooth phones had Bluetooth on by default. A friend of mine used to pull all sorts of malicious crap with a Nokia N-Gage. He would just sit in a busy mall hacking away at anyone who sits in the food court. If you have a blue tooth phone with no off setting get a replacement. ;)
Is there some way we can work a random, irrelevant Microsoft bash into this discussion about viruses?
Duplicate posts by editor, according to a quick unscientific search on Google (site:slashdot.org dupe "posted by $name"):
timothy - 114
michael - 104
CmdrTaco - 80
Hemos - 32
CowboyNeal - 22
pudge - 12
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
And yes... 85% of sms spam will come from infected windows cellphones.
...why, oh, why, oh WHY does everything that ought to be a simple, functional device end up as a bloated mass of featuritis with a clunky user interface, a 250-page manual... and the ability to accept and automatically execute executable content?
There is no rationale reason whatsoever why a cell phone needs to be susceptible to viruses.
What next? Digital cameras that are capable of updating their firmware by photographing the screen of the vendor's website... that will be infested by virus code which somebody smuggles onto the Jumbotron screen at a football game?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Doctors don't diagnose themselves, Hairdressers don't cut their own hair, bus drivers take the car to work, the people at the benefits office got jobs. Surely reporters not reading their own stories is nothing to be suprised about. /me opens the morning newspaper and counts the spelling errors and dupe posts in a paid for newspaper. Neither do editors in "respectable" news outlets it seems.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Symbian (and MSFT once they get their act together) will almost certainly bring baaaaad virii to the phone networks. I have done a lot of work with Symbian phones, and SMS but I'm not a script kiddie/virus guy, but I'm gonna tell ya how you SHOULD have done this. (give me some props if you actually do it).
There was(is) a bug on some of the US based sms GSM handsets (may be worse, but I only know the US).... The bug was that sending a malformed binary SMS message to a specific SMSC would hang the queue for the device.... you just wouldn't get any more SMS messages to your phone (until they went in and poked it out by hand)
You should have exploited the fact that all phones now use SMS, and most have either Symbian or Java... Written a propagation routine that read the addy book, propogated to all of those, and then sent the sender a malformed message of death!
The user would get a message from his buddy saying "install", and after he did, he;d be fucked before he could stop it/call his friends. MUCH higher propagation levels no?
Second better plan to the one they did:
Trogan a java game (since you can get at the code so easy)... put up some services on various operator networks.... like Voda Live, or the 88k different ringtone providers etc... and then just have all infected phones text their premium rate servies all day long.
Not my game plan personally, but IT IS COMING! all the things I said today can happen TODAY!
-------- I dig Mobile Phones
Well damn if that's not amazing.
My hat's off to these brave pioneers, searching for viruses in the wilds of the Yukon. (Or is it the Netherlands?) I imagine it must have been like the guy who found the first dinosaur skeleton. All these hecklers saying they don't exaist, then BOOM justification for all that research money spent digging through centuries of sediment.
No, now really. Isn't the proper term something more like "released," "written," or perhaps "invented?"
± 29 dB