R U Infected? Mobile Phone Virus Cured!

[MacDawg]

Was anyone in the MR community infected?
Heard of anyone?

Well, they got a fix for it...

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/20/1087669838602.html?oneclick=true

Now they are trying to decide whether to offer it for free... or charge. Told you it would spawn a whole new anti-virus industry for phones!

 

[russed]

oh dear, i can see us having to buy annual subscriptions for norton for symbian soon. there will be virii being released on a daily basis and we will be seeing bucket loads of useless phones. maybe is is nokia's plan then! release virii that render phones useless so people have to buy new phones as they are not at the moment

 

[mkrishnan]

Direct link to TSG's Phone Safe :

Looks like making the first version free slipped through the cracks. OTOH *no one* had downloaded it when I checked. I like how it claims protection for all known viruses; at least it offers 12 mos of upgrades to back that up....

What I'm surprised about, honestly, is how quiet the big BT handset mfr'rs are. I couldn't find *anything* about this on Nokia's website, and I'm guessing Nokia sells a pretty large percentage of BT-enabled phones, since it seems like almost every BT phone on the market is either a Nokia or a Sony-Ericsson....

 

[MacDawg]

I like how it claims protection for all known viruses

I guess that's a pretty easy claim when there is only one known virus! Apparently it wasn't so widespread, or else people weren't too bothered by it. Some might not even know they have it! They might be virus carriers and not know it. Would it be possible to configure BT to check for a virus before it connects?

Oh, I forgot... I don't have any BT devices anyway

 

[mkrishnan]

Alsso Cabir is totally innocent...it doesn't do anything except propogate itself and drop a splash screen on your phone.

 

[Sayer]

Alsso Cabir is totally innocent...it doesn't do anything except propogate itself and drop a splash screen on your phone.

As a proof of concept, maybe, but most coders don't stop with a proof of concept.

Some old-school Mac virii were "innocent" and yet they had bugs in them that could cause crashes leading to data loss or corrupted disks. I don't think I'd call anything that "infects" any device and spreads (taking up resources from people paying real money for said services) totally harmless.