Sunday, Jun 12, 2005
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Thiruvananthapuram
Staff Reporter
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Mobile phone viruses that can infect handsets and cause its batteries to drain quickly have been traced in the city. The viruses, believed to be a variant of the world's first mobile phone worm, `Cabir,' infect high-end mobile phones that run on the Symbian operating system and have Bluetooth capabilities, a short-range wireless technology that connects electronic devices. The Symbian operating system is a technology specially developed for palm-tops. With a growing number of high-end handsets cramming in the facilities of a palm-top into it, the system is now used in mobile devices as well. The virus causes an infected phone to display `Caribe' and then connect to other Bluetooth phones to disseminate the worm. The virus enters the handset in the form of a message and gets installed as a separate icon along with other applications of the mobile phone when the message is opened. The worm then starts replicating itself by sending similar messages to other Bluetooth phones nearby, draining the batteries fast. As the range of dissemination of a Bluetooth phone is limited to 10-30 metres, the viruses spread quickly inside crowded enclosures such as cinema halls and auditorium. Though only a small section of the high-end mobile users has had the `Caribe' viruses in their handsets, cell phone dealers warn that the attack of viruses are not limited to any particular operating system or mobile phones. "The attack of viruses can occur in any operating system or mobile phones," said Bilal Aboobaker, managing director of a leading cell phone showroom in the city. "But unlike Caribe, a majority of the viruses that infect a mobile phone cannot be identified," said Mr. Aboobaker. "You will realise it only when the phone hangs or become disabled." The risk of more viruses infecting cell phones is growing with mobile devices becoming sophisticated. According to experts, the newer third-generation phones that function as mini computers will become susceptible to the same tricks that help viruses infect desktop computers. "With mobile phone networks rapidly adopting standard net technologies to offer multimedia services, phones are becoming vulnerable to some of the infection techniques used by many desktop computer viruses," said V.K. Bhadran, Joint Director, Cyber Forensics, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). The worm spreads like e-mail viruses on Symbian Series 60 mobile phones. It is also capable of spreading through Bluetooth.
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