Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Anti-Virus Protection For Your Cell Phone

Posted by Zonk on from the little-wireless-virii dept.

spect3r writes "BBC Tech reports that F-Secure, a Finnish security firm has created a software program to combat the increasing number of viruses that manage their way into cell phones. Although not as robust as your mainstream virus scanners for the PC, the software promises to protect bluetooth enabled handsets (the most vulnerable type) from most of the current types of virus software, such as Cabir or Commwarrior. F-Secure said that it's boxed anti-virus software for mobiles will be in the shops and available online from 5 September." From the article: "Mobile viruses such as Cabir and Commwarrior can spread via the Bluetooth short range radio system found on many smart phones. Commwarrior can also spread via multimedia messaging systems. Most of the mobile phone viruses target handsets that use the Symbian operating system. Infection can be avoided by turning off Bluetooth on smart phones. "

4 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bluetooth should be off anyway by failure-man · · Score: 2, Informative

    Except that nobody actually goes toothing. It's an urban ledgend that was probably created to see if it would become reality if you got enough people to believe it.

  2. Re:I though these things went after market share by failure-man · · Score: 2, Informative

    (I know, there is no real way for one iPod to infect the next, I'm doing a funny rant on market share is why windows is attacted)

    Ahem . . .

  3. Other reasons for mobile security by itr2401 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are other reasons for mobile security out there - especially in the corporate arena:
    * Centralized Management and Provisioning
    * Easy to Use
    * Anti-Spam for SMS Text Messages (this is an emerging problem)
    * Flexible Virus Scanning
    * Rapid Virus Pattern Updates

    Trend Micro has a solution for this already(Trend Micro Mobile Security), and supports the following Mobile Devices:
    * Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003/2003SE for Smartphone
    * Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003/2003SE for Pocket PC Phone Edition
    * Symbian(TM) OS v7.0 with UIQ 2.0/2.1 User Interface
    * Symbian OS v7.0s with Series 60 Platform User Interface

  4. Re:Putting your requirements on other people by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Informative

    Symbian's actually not that vulnerable, it's just a bigger target than Palm OS when it comes to smartphones... Bluetooth, OTOH...

    These viruses require active participation to get the thing going. Therefore, saying NO to an unsolicited BT DL will fix it.