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About That Cell Phone 'Virus'
From: William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 09:42:23 -0500
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36843,00.html by Lynn Burke 3:00 a.m. Jun. 8, 2000 PDT It's almost pass to debunk the import of viruses these days. But the wireless Timofonica worm - which is ending up in more media accounts than it is in cell phones - deserves some debunking anyway. Here's the thing: So far, the wireless worm hasn't hurt anyone, hasn't "crashed" any cell phones, and hasn't cost businesses worldwide the usual estimated billions of dollars. And contrary to the image of an invisible beast replicating itself inside a cell phone that is being bandied about the Internet, this worm is a run-of-the-mill text-based message that works by attaching itself to good, old-fashioned email messages. Imagine. It's also worth noting that the Timofonica worm seems to be contained specifically to Spanish phone company Telefonica's cell phone system. In other words, the cell phones of U.S. citizens are safe as long as they remain in this country with their red-blooded peers. That said, the worm does set itself apart from its predecessors by its overt political motivations. The message showing up on tiny cell phone screens rails against Telefonica's business practices and its recent acquisition of Lycos, the parent company of Wired News. "It's definitely one of the more political ones we've seen," said Elias Levy, security expert and CTO of SecurityFocus.com. David Emery, an Internet folklore expert who maintains About.com's Urban Legends and Folklore guide, said the worm's political bent is unusual. "Other than the fact that virus writers tend to have sort of an anarchical bent, it's pretty atypical that someone creates a virus for political purposes," he said. Even if one considered the sweeping denial-of-service attacks that hit major companies in February to be politically motivated, he said, the message was more of a monolithic, anti-big-business one. This message is very specifically anti-Telefonica. The message, as intercepted by security company F-Secure (which is, incidentally, making a concerted effort to push its WAP security wares, decries Telefonica, and offers readers "proof" that the telephone giant is doing dirty business. In order to see the proof, however, users have to click on a (disguised) vbs file. Thus the "virus." *-------------------------------------------------* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC --------------------------------------------------- C4I Secure Solutions http://www.c4i.org *-------------------------------------------------* ISN is sponsored by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
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- About That Cell Phone 'Virus' William Knowles (Jun 09)