Here I am downloading the coolest Missy Elliot ringtone for my new nokia and a question came to mind. Can I be downloading a virus? Is there a way to prevent this? Thanks in advance!!
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Here I am downloading the coolest Missy Elliot ringtone for my new nokia and a question came to mind. Can I be downloading a virus? Is there a way to prevent this? Thanks in advance!!
Ummm, i don't think nokias can get viruses. It was good that you thought of that, it shows good sense of awareness in the security world. I am not really sure, maybe somebody here knows. Once again good way of being aware trinity. -Ebo
About a month ago, I read something posted here on AO about viruses on wireless devices if I remember correctly. You might want to do a search from the home page or do a google search.
t2k2
Trinity,
I don't know much about virus in Nokias and i don't know if this is a hoax, but in this site http://www.links999.net/communication/WAP.html this is posted:
Bye.Quote:
Meanwhile, WAP technology has everyone's attention. The first mobile telephone virus has been detected, some SMS messages can crash your cellphone, as recently happened to the Nokia series...
While it is possible to have viruses on cell phones... its not something you should really worry about right now. If anything, I'd be worried about viruses on my PDA rather than my cell.
Most of the viruses that have been created for cell phones were cell/PDAs. (Those were just done in labs... like a proof thing...)
This is a bit old... but still good.
Another from security focus.
Silicon Valley...
The list goes on.
I was unable to find anything specifically about Nokia cell phones and virueses though... but I didn't look for long.
I'd say you are pretty safe... for now... ;)
I think that if cell phone viruses were out there.. you'd hear it through the media...
"Hackers" flood 911 with sophisticated attack using a wide spread virus on a cell phone... or something like that.
It would be so easy to propagate a virus on a wireless device... I mean... %50 percent of us or more own them, and have them on us all the time. Anyone within the tower could recieve it...
No. Not really. not yet. quit worrying.
man...i got excited when i read the title of this thread because I actually thought you were talking about nokia firewall appliances, not stupid cell phones (jk).
BTW, if anyone wants to know anything about Nokia/Checkpoint firewalls and clustering, let me know, I have tons of extra experience over the last couple weeks trying to get it to work, and let me be the first to say that it is a pain in the ass. Nobody has any good documentation on it yet.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23080.html
this is an old article that reports that someone could crash a cell phone just by sending an sms in which the User Data Header is broken
hope it helps
Not too much to worry about now, but I see this type of thing happening in the future, for sure.. In reality, you could expect virii to be present on any type of device that can be programmed, coded, and such. I mean, after all, if you can give a device good instructions (normal operating code), why couldn't you give it malformed or bad instructions (virus possibilities)? After that you'd only have to find a way to transmit and spread the virus.
It is possible, but the chances are unlikely.....
The thing is that many people don't understand the whole coding for a cellphone and it's little OS (whichever one) and have very little access to playing with it. It's not like a PDA/Phone where the OS is either PalmOS or WinCE, where people can code it and play with it (even emulate it).
While mobile phones are not big targets (yet), the advancements of features on them will make them bigger targets soon enough. The concern of viruses is a good one.
It seems that PC-cillin has a virus scanner for wireless devices, but don't know if it includes phones or just PDA/phones.... (verified: it is only for PDA and PDA/Phones)
Here's my Tutorial
on securing a PDA for viruses and other security things
Info on Cell Virus HoaxQuote:
There are viruses out there.
Phage.936 is the first recorded virus (http://news.com.com/2100-1040-246085.html]Source) & Liberty is the first Trojan recorded (Source) for the PDA handhelds. So it's not a bad idea to download a virus checker for your PDA. Both Symantic and McAfee have beta versions, as well as PC-Cillin
Quote:
...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....
Source
Quote:
...In reality, there are dangers of virus attacks any time a cell phone is used to send out email or when the phone is used to access a company’s database. There is also a high risk of cell phone viruses when using mobile banking. The potential exists for “intelligent” cell phone viruses to not only bring the device to its knees, but also to spy on sensitive data....
Source