First mobile phone virus nears 2nd birthday
The first real mobile phone virus, which was found in the wild and could replicate on its own, was discovered almost two years ago.
On June 15 2004, Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure and Russian rival Kaspersky released details about a piece of mobile phone malware that used Bluetooth to try and spread to other Symbian series60-based mobile phones.
Almost two years on, F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hyppönen reports that although there are now over 200 mobile phone viruses -- many of which are variants of Cabir -- the problem is unlikely to get as bad as it has with PCs. "The difference is that PC viruses were first found in 1986 and mobile phone viruses were found in 2004," said Hyppönen in an interview with ZDNet Australia at the AusCERT conference in the Gold Coast last week. "So we are living in the equivalent of 1988 but in 1988 Microsoft or hardware manufacturers were not doing anything about viruses".
