High-tech phones bring virus potential

Malicious programs that can delete address books. Junk messages that flood a cell phone's inbox. Stealthy code that uses Bluetooth wireless technology to sneak onto handsets.

Scared yet? Security experts say plagues like these will target mobile phones, but others contend cell phone viruses are the tech equivalent of smallpox: To the best of anyone's knowledge, they exist only in labs.

"We've had no reports of people actually seeing these viruses in their daily use," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with London's Sophos PLC. "The only reports we've seen documented are antivirus researchers sending them to each other in their labs."

Japanese phone company NTT DoCoMo already sells phones with built-in antivirus software from McAfee Inc., and McAfee expects similar phones to be available in the United States and Europe in 2005.

But worried chatters should know that security experts this year found only five viruses that target mobile phones, and all of them were created and contained within labs, Cluley said.

Despite names like "Cabir" and "Skulls," the cell phone viruses created in the labs aren't as lethal as viruses that have attacked PCs.

For Skulls to work, it had to be downloaded and activated. After that, it rendered a user's programs inoperable and replaced the icons with skulls.