Cabir virus spreads to France, Japan
Mobile phones infected with the Cabir virus have turned up in Japan and France, according to antivirus software company F-Secure of Helsinki.
The new infections bring the number of countries where Cabir infections have been reported to 16. But Cabir is still a slow-spreading and relatively rare virus that is unlikely to affect most mobile phone users, said Mikko Hypponen, manager of antivirus research at F-Secure.
An F-Secure office in Japan reported that a Japanese visitor to Hong Kong in February had a Vodafone Group 702NK mobile phone that was infected with Cabir. Cabir spreads on phones that run the Symbian operating system and are equipped with Bluetooth wireless connections, including Series 60 phones from a number of manufacturers, such as Siemens, Nokia, and others. The virus first appeared last June as a "proof of concept" released by virus writing group 29a.
Cabir does not install malicious software on machines it infects, but does modify the configuration of infected phones, copy itself into hidden directories on the phones and display "Caribe" or "Caribe-VZ-29A" on the screen.
