Wednesday, August 11, 2004
the first mobile virus?
the bbc reports today of the first known mobile phone trojan virus. the trojan runs in the background while the user plays the game "mosquito" and sends outbound text messages to premium services. the end result is the rather large bill that the phone owner receives from all of the outbound premium text services sent by the trojan.
the trojan can only be found in pirated copies of the game. the handy people who cracked and released the now pirated version claim that they did not integrate the virus into the game, so the origin of the virus is still unknown. is this real or a pr scam from mobile operators who fear lost revenues once phones become "more open" to PCs.
the game mosquito runs off of the symbian mobile operating system which makes it easier to mount phones to desktop PCs (if the mobile manufacturer enables this).
the trojan can only be found in pirated copies of the game. the handy people who cracked and released the now pirated version claim that they did not integrate the virus into the game, so the origin of the virus is still unknown. is this real or a pr scam from mobile operators who fear lost revenues once phones become "more open" to PCs.
the game mosquito runs off of the symbian mobile operating system which makes it easier to mount phones to desktop PCs (if the mobile manufacturer enables this).
# posted by Chad Stoller @ 8:11 PM 
