Spreading Mobile Phone Viruses thru Text

The increasing use of text messaging has also increased the risk of exposure and acquiring of a Mobile Phone virus. An SMS message is not the only route that a Mobile Phone Virus can infect your cell phone or PDA. Bluetooth is also a threat as well as MMS messages.

A few years ago; some scientist in Holland discovered a way to send text virus laden messages to a certain brand of mobile phone. In the format that they had established, the phone owner would have no way of knowing that the message that they have received contained a virus that was capable of bringing their mobile phone down. The message was formatted so that it would instruct the phone to perform certain programs that renders it virtually useless.

The creators of this SMS virus also noted that it is unlikely that virus authors would use it as a vector for Mobile Phone infections, because the procedure was reported to be a bit cumbersome and that an individual needs to have an extensive knowledge of how a mobile phone works. Also, they said that one of the reasons why SMS viruses have not spread is that no author would want to spend their own money to infect mobile phones.

That was a few years ago. At present, it would be extremely foolhardy to underestimate the capabilities of virus authors. Also, there a lot of websites that support free outgoing SMS. As new mobile phones are made available on the market, you can be sure that more than a handful of individuals are working on it.

Posted in Text Messaging  on April 9, 2008 - 3:25 am by admin  |