Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Cabir's first birthday!

Today, Cabir celebrates its first birthday. One year ago, 29a sent a sample of their latest creation to AV vendors worldwide via Virusbuster, a Spanish virus collector. It turned out to be a worm that targeted mobile phones running under the Symbian 60 OS with Bluetooth capabilities. The source code for the original Cabir appeared on the Net in late December 2004, which led to a number of copycat variants appearing in the wild. Cabir infections have been registered in over 30 countries to date. In addition, there are now close to 100 malicious programs targeting mobile phones, most of which are Trojans. This highlights two important aspects: operating systems for mobile devices are very insecure thus far, and users need to realize that mobile devices are vulnerable to the same type of attacks as regular PCs.
Just today NOKIA downplayed the danger from mobile viruses, maintaining that it does not consider them a major threat. The denial comes in the wake of a report published last week by analyst firm Gartner identifying the threat from mobile viruses as one of the greatest security myths, and claiming that mobile antivirus software would be ineffective.
Experience has shown that malware authors target systems that are commonly used. Ownership of mobile devices hasn't yet reached critical mass; but when it does, they will prove an irresistible target! That's my opinion about it!