Virus writers have targeted mobile phones and are threatening to
disrupt the delivery of SMS messages, warns international
anti-virus software development organisation, Kaspersky Lab.
Christened the 'SMS-Flooder' by its creator, 'HSE', the harmful
program was discovered recently in Germany and is said to be
capable of flooding mobile phones with repetitive messages sent to
selected telephone numbers.
According to the company, the program is written in MS Visual
Basic 5.0 and utilises the public "canals" in mobile phone networks
to transmit the nuisance text.
"What the code does is allow the user to create an SMS message
and then forward this in any volume to any mobile phone numbers and
in any gateways he wishes," explains Kirill Zhuchkov, business
development manager at Kaspersky Lab's Moscow office. "This can
then flood the network and interfere with mobile phone users
receiving other messages."
Kaspersky Lab specialists have classified the program as a
'malicious code' rather than as a virus because the program itself
is not dangerous, does not perform any destructive action and is
not capable of replication.
And while it appears at present to be confined to German
gateways, Zhuchkov confirms that the company is concerned the
source code will be published in hacker groups and may prompt
others to write new applications for the program outside of
Germany.
For mobile users experiencing floods of messages on their
phones, Zhuchkov advises contacting the mobile operator as an
initial step so that the company can either block its gateway or
take action to prevent spam from affecting other users.
Because "a good virus is a dead virus", Kaspersky Lab has added
details for the detection and neutralisation of the program to its
anti-virus protection website.