Mobile phone virus has been unleashed in the wild which is harmless in the sense that it does nothing other than displaying a banner on the phone when switched on. It spreads through the bluetooth technology of mobile phones using Symbian Operating System(OS). Nokia 60 series uses this OS. The virus is supposed to be written by a group by the name of 29A from Spain. There are several stories regarding this; one being at the link shown below.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/technology/34582.html For technical info and removal instructions hit the following link: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/epoc.cabir.html -------------Information related to Viruses--------- Group(29A) also has a website. http://29a.host.sk/ (Read the warning displayed by the website and hit "Enter" if you wish..Don't worry, it is safe to visit the website..:)) For those who are curious on how virus(and other malicious code) works I would suggest the following website. http://vx.netlux.org This website also archives various e-zines(electronic magazines) related to viruses written by different "groups". The complete list of e-zines is at the following link. http://vx.netlux.org/vx.php?id=zidx The group being blamed for this mobile phone virus 29A also have a e-zine by the same name. Link follows: http://vx.netlux.org/vx.php?id=z001 If you want to read it online: http://29a.host.sk/main.html One of the group member of 29A goes by the name "Benny" and has written a "virus writing guide" which apparently is very (un)popular among the virus writing community and those who want to learn how this works. That article is in the 4th edition of the 29A mag. Direct link to the article follows: http://vx.netlux.org/lib/static/vdat/tumisc60.htm (English is not very good in this article of his as you would expect as he(she?) is Spanish but the content is impressive) Again you don't have to be a virus writer or the bad guy wanting to read this. This will give you insight into virus writing which might help anyone willing to be a security expert..:) More importantly, as it requires a thorough knowledge of computers/Operating System you will be on your way to becoming one. Magazines do contain several source codes to viruses but the best way to analyse any latest viruses/worms/trojans (such as slammer or Sobig) etc is reverse engineering after capturing the executable (can it from the site mentioned earlier) as you don't expect the sourcecode to be available. This involves disassembling the code using disassembler and analyse the code using debuggers. You will need some basic understanding of Assembly language to understand the code. Warning: If you do decide to experiment with the viruses, do so on a computer not in use or atleast create a back-up of the disk just in case. Mainly because some viruses are crude (and for educational purposes!) and are not written in most effcient way and might cause serious harm to your computer even if the author didn't intend to do so (oops !!). Neeraj __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
