Are Cell Viruses A Real Threat Now?

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."

Comments

Heh

[Walkiry]

'We expect to see more of this on the mobile front,'

I bet you do, as you are probably already hard at work to make it happen.

Cell Phones

[certel]

Everyone knew this was coming. Anything that has any type of software code will eventually be exploited or tried to be exploited at some point.

Simplicity is the key to beating this easily...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just buy a damn PHONE. You know. Those things that used to just go ring-ring, and you pick it up and talk on it and maybe keep an address book on? I still use a Motorola V60 flip phone. No windows/PalmOS/WinOS/WinCE/PocketPC/2003 crap to worry about. Ring tones? No thanks. I'm not 13 anymore, trying to make some sort of 17-second "statement" to the crowd around my ringing phone. Sometimes simplicity is the key. K.I.S.S. metheodology is still around for a reason.

Re:You better believe it's a threat.

[black mariah]

My phone was a freebie about four years ago when I signed up, and still has way more features than I ever want or need.

I highlighted the key words there for you. You may not use those features, but someone does, and probably on a very regular basis.

I don't need it to be a low quality digital camera, hard-to-use PDA, sub-standard web browser, trivial calculator, poor-capacity MP3 player, pathetically quiet alarm clock, and all the other junk. Nor do I need it to run some super-complicated operating system that's ripe for attacking.

So you'd rather carry around a camera, a PDA, a calculator, an MP3 player, an alarm clock, and all the other junk instead of having it all in one convenient package? I hope you have a lot of pockets...

Get with the times, Grampa!

[MrBoombasticfantasti]

Yes, you are a Luddite, we know. Some of us actually like to have a phone with all the bells and whistles because it saves hauling around a dozen other devices like an mp3 player, a camera and pda. Need internet? I'll whip out my phone and can connect to any Wifi, UMTS or GPRS network. I even use Skype to save on long distance calls.

But I suppose you drive around a horse and carriage too...

Re:You better believe it's a threat.

[black mariah]

I love how there are so many total fucking Luddites on a supposed tech forum.

How many people would really miss any of these features if they weren't there?

How many people would REALLY miss their cell phone at all? If you get into such stupid questions as "Who NEEDS that?" the answer is always "Well, nobody really NEEDS it... it's just nice to have if you have a use for it."

There's a huge difference between having a real PDA and some token naff organiser thing on a mobile phone. A real MP3 player would have far more capacity than the recently announced phones. A real calculator or computer system can blow away anything integrated into any phone I've ever seen. A real digital camera can produce vastly higher resolution images than any phone.

So fucking what if you can store 12,000 songs on your new whiz-bang MP3 player? Even at home I'm rarely listening to more than 20-30 songs in rotation so having enough room for that many songs on a phone is a nice feature. Okay, a real calculator can beat up a phone calculator... so what? Who uses a calculator so often that they carry one in their pocket every day? But how many that almost never use one will be glad there's one on their phone that one time they need it? Why are you worried about the resolution of a camera phone anyway? The point isn't super shiny photo-quality images the point is to send something immediately.

For every argument you make against including something on a phone, I can make ten why it SHOULD be on there.

Even ignoring that, how often do people really need to take all of these things everywhere they go anyway? I don't see the convenience, nor even the novelty value, and apparently neither does pretty much everyone I know or walk past in the street.

The question isn't "how often do people need to take these things with them?", it's "how often do you need these things and not have them?"

I'll bet you a drink that when large parts of mobile phone networks start dying because all the 3G/4G devices running $MOBILE_OS got infected with a virus within minutes, people find giving up all the naff extras a small price to pay for being able to make a call when they need to.

Line up the Red Bull, 'cause I'll be thirsty. Cameras, text messaging, PDA functionality, MP3 players... they make too much sense and are too useful to give up.

Like I said before, YOU might not find these things useful, but SOMEONE does.

If one in a hundred people find a use for something, that's 3.5 million people that use it in this country alone. That's a LOT of potential users for something that is trivial to implement and will only bother people that are large enough asshats to complain about something that has no impact on their life whatsoever.