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Are Cell Viruses A Real Threat Now?

Posted by Zonk on from the reach-out-and-cough-someone dept.

Celpha writes "According to security firm F-Secure, a Trojan virus (Cardtrap.A) attacks Symbian mobile phone operating systems, attempting to infect users' PCs if they insert the phone's memory card into their computers. From the article: 'We expect to see more of this on the mobile front,' an F-Secure chief research officer said. Trend Micro issued a media alert stating it is a 'fully functioning' mobile threat. However, Antivirus firm Sophos slams the claim of this first example of a serious mobile malware threat as just plain bonkers."

3 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Just Windows. by kihjin · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you are going to quote some one, quote them completely.

    From TFA(emphasis mine):
    "We expect to see more of this on the mobile front," Hypponen said. "We may begin to see Windows viruses spreading to PDAs that are synched up to computers, or go from PCs to mobile phones with the memory card."

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  2. Still just a trojan... by MosesJones · · Score: 3, Informative


    It irritates me when trojans are lumped with the virus crowd. This requires a user to ACCEPT and INSTALL the application before it becomes an issue, it is useless without that user interaction.

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    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  3. Cell Phone Viruses would pose no threat if.... by Khyber · · Score: 3, Informative

    Cell companies would make cell phones that didn't rely upon such an exploitable OS.

    Granted Symbian is nice, looks pretty, but everyone I know with a cell phone running Symbian also complains that the phone is so slow to respond.

    All the old Nokia phones were extremely fast, responsive (no 3-4 second lag waiting to go back a screen just to look at one freaking phone number) and best of all, didn't require such an exploitable OS because at the time, it was all hardware logic-control.

    I don't know what the OS is on my Kyocera Phantom phone, but even it's slow to respond to keystrokes, and it doesn't have all those little capabilities that most phones nowdays have.

    Simply put, as long as phone companies use software instead of hardware to control a phone, there will always be a threat of software infection.

    Just an opinion...

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