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52 new Symbian viruses discovered by SimWorks

20 April 2005 18:26 by James "Dela" Delahunty

SimWorks is a Symbian anti-virus specialist and a leading developer of innovative mobile applications for the Symbian platform. Today the company announced it has discovered 52 new trojan viruses that affect Series 60 phones using Symbian OS v6.1 or newer such as the Nokia 3650, 6600 and 6630. None of the trojans affect UIQ based Symbian phones such as the popular Sony Ericsson P900/910 and Motorola A925/1000. The trojans appear to be cracked versions of popular Symbian applications such as BitStorm, BugMe!, Cosmic Fighter, 3D Motoracer and SplashID.

"This is a significant development as until now we've usually found mobile trojans two or three at a time at the most. It would be easy for a malware writer to create 1 trojan and give it 52 different names however this is not the case here where we have 52 separately cracked and infected applications. Somebody has gone to an awful lot of time and effort to turn these out". SimWorks CEO Aaron Davidson said. He also has a theory as to why the virus creators would go to so much trouble.

"Previous mobile viruses have either been able to spread but cause no harm or alternatively have been able cause significant harm but not able to spread. It may be that producing large numbers of harmful trojans such as those we discovered today is a reaction by the writers to their inability to produce destructive viruses that can effectively spread. Obviously by producing large numbers of these things you greatly improve the odds of someone actually downloading and installing them". SimWorks has yet to receive any reports of the 52 trojans identified today in the wild.

"Until reports are received of these trojans in the wild there is little risk to end users" said Davidson. "From all appearances however these are ready to release now and putting all 52 onto a single site would make downloading from it like playing Russian roulette with your phone. Every other file could contain something that could cause your phone to be corrupted requiring a factory reset or worse and the loss of all your contacts and other data". SimWorks advises that the mobile phone users take the usual precautions, including never accepting files from people they do not know and never downloading applications from unknown sources and crack sites.

Source:
Simworks

Thanks to Mr. Davidson (adavidson) for submitting the article to us using the News Submission form.

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