New Worm Targets Cell Phones, Turns Them to Zombies
We've covered plenty of posts on rogue botnets, which are collections of virus-infected computers that hackers use to fulfill their evil whims, usually by unleashing denial of service attacks on sites they don't like. These compromised computers are often referred to as zombies. Now, with cell phones getting smarter and more capable, the belief is that it won't be long before hackers have fleets of zombie phones at their disposal, too. Well, folks, that very thing may already be happening. Zombie botnets are usually created by worms like the recently infamous Conficker virus. These worms spread themselves from one computer to another, usually by tricking people into downloading and installing the virus by passing it off as a video or piece of software. There's a new worm, for example, called Yxes.A (a.k.a. "Sexy View"), that's targeting some Nokia handsets. Right now, the virus only collects information about the user, including their phone number and their handset's serial number, but it could realistically do anything it wants -- including place unwanted long-distance calls.
This is only the first phone worm, keep in mind. And it infections usually only hit phones onto which you can install third-party apps, which is increasingly more phones (the iPhone, Nokia Symbian-OS-based phones, Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerrys, Android, etc). Surely, more will be coming. Unfortunately, at present, you're on your own for cell phone virus protection. But you should be just as careful when following links and downloading software there as you are on your home computer. [From: New Scientist]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
lEE said 2:33PM on 3-12-2009
Interesting that the Cell phones are being messed with like
virus stuff on computers. About time some smart bastard started
messing with them I guess. I'm confused as to why of course as
itmakes no sense, other then they can do it so they do. If they
can steal your number and serial number, then theft is the reason
and I understand people that steal, or I try to. character is fo course
something they dont have and not a real person or human being.
not honest is a way of life here in America and it goes from
govrnment down. or up how ever you want to look at it. OUr
government is for sure full of self serving people and not folks
that are interested in serving the people. Well, this is a waste of
my time to write on this thing, as who give a hoot what I have to
say. lee.
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