Worm ready to wriggle into smart phones

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The last word on this so called "worm"...

Folks, Here?s a good link about the ?worm?.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/symbian_virus/

Main points:
1) It?s a proof-of-concept. It isn?t in the wild.
2) It isn?t a worm. Worms are self-propagating without any user interaction required. This is actually a Trojan Horse: it pretends to be something it isn?t in order to get the user to install it. (In this case it pretends to be, ironically, a Security Manager, when it actually just starts looking for other devices that it can send itself to.)
3) The user receives 2 warnings that the installation could be harmful and that the source of the file is unknown and has to click ?Yes? to proceed on both occasions.

I don?t see anything clever or earth shattering about the "worm" at all. In fact, I?d be surprised if it wasn?t possible to write something like this for a Smartphone. What else can the Smartphone manufacturer do? They?ve warned the user about a potential security risk, the user then installs a piece of unknown code anyway, which then tries to send itself to another device. Should the manufacturer only permit the manufacturer?s code to run on the device? That rather defeats the purpose of having a standard platform and it has some interesting monopoly implications. Prevent non-manufacturer written code from accessing the Bluetooth APIs? Same problem...

These smart phone are little computers - they execute code so they'll be able to execute a hostile program if you agree to have it (twice!) Take that capacity away an there goes all the fun and games you want to download to the phone...

So users beware - duh.

Nothing to see here. Please move along...

And one "fix" is turning off the Bluetooth - which makes no sense - it's like saying that if you got a virus on your PC, you should never connect the Ethernet cable again...

Posted by: Adam West   Posted on: 06/23/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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