Summer always brings out the bugs and this year was no exception as
the first mobile viruses started to bite.
Antony SavvasThe European mobile industry has been left reeling from a number
of viruses which have been targeted at phones and personal digital
assistants (PDAs). And if the industry cannot do something to
reassure users, many companies will put off integrating wireless
solutions to corporate networks.
The first mobile virus appeared at the beginning of this summer,
and affected a small number of users in Spain. The "Timofonica"
attack (a play on leading Spanish operator Telefonica, with "timo"
meaning "scam" or "con-trick" in Spanish) received a lot of
publicity because it followed hot on the heels of the I-Love-You
virus which affected fixed networks.
It also received attention however, because of the publicity
machine that has driven the widespread hype of wireless application
protocol (Wap) phones and the advancing third generation (3G)
technology, which are supposed to be the potent forces to form a
data content industry for e-commerce.
There were similar characteristics to the I-Love-You virus,
however. Both were designed to be spread using Microsoft Outlook
e-mail address books, both were written in Microsoft Visual Basic
Script, and both were designed to spread using the "brute force"
technique of being continually sent.
The users targeted by Timofonica were mobile subscribers on the
Movistar network. Unlike the I-Love-You virus though, the numbers
affected were small because the Timofonica virus relied on being
spread by SMS (Short Message Service) messages being sent from
Outlook address books.
The person responsible for Timofonica started the contamination
of the Movistar network by going through the operator's Internet
mobile messaging gateway, and relied on the first victims having
SMS addresses in their Outlook address books which could be used to
spread the virus.
However, as most people send SMS messages from phone to phone,
most don't bother to record other SMS addresses in their e-mail
address books on their PCs, so Timofonicadidn't causeserious
problems.
The technique, however, was quickly followed in Germany, where
another attacker used the mobile Internet messaging gateways of at
least six ISPs, including Lycos.de. It is not clear how many people
were affected by the so-called "SMS-Flooder", but the attack also
proved that mobile networks are the new sweet shop for hackers and
their ilk.
The integration of mobile devices with corporate systems is
currently supposed to be one of the most important moves for
companies to finalise. But with the risk of a contaminated mobile
device spreading a virus or some type of bug through the corporate
firewall, there are bound to be concerns.
If the mobile operators fixed their systems to make sure such
rogue code did not get onto their networks in the first place,
there wouldn't be a problem, but companies will not want to rely on
Internet service providers to do their job for them.
But while a strong corporate firewall with anti-virus software
is now a must, new strains as yet unseen are bound to be spread,
initially undetected.
This is particularly true considering the faster and higher
bandwidth mobile technologies which will soon be arriving in the
form of GPRS this year and 3G UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone
System) to follow. This technology will allow mobiles and PDAs to
easily receive and re-distribute e-mail attachments, presentations,
and video clips, which can all, of course, act as Trojan horses for
viruses when passing through company firewalls.
And with PDAs, the threat was demonstrated last month by the
Palm operating system being affected as a result of some users
downloading bootleg games software from the Web. As most PDA users
synchronise their devices with their PCs, the threat of spreading
viruses is clear.
The mobile handset manufacturers rightly say that the recent
attacks are not really viruses, and have so far not been harmful.
In the case of Timofonica, the worst a user could receive was an
offensive message about Telefonica, but no one knows where the
situation will lead.
And even the manufacturers have suffered. In the most recent and
third mobile phone attack, a range of Nokia phones were susceptible
to a bug sent as part of an SMS message, which froze the keypad. To
re-activate the phone, users simply had to take out the battery and
put it back in, but logic isn't so apparent when you're in a hurry
trying to run an office on the move.