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The Calm Before the Storm for Mobile Viruses
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The anti-virus software house, Kaspersky Lab has released its latest quarterly report. Alexander Gostev, Kaspersky Lab's Senior Virus Analyst, described this period as 'the calm before the storm'. In the period under review, there were there were only a few pieces of mobile malware which stood out from the mass of primitive Skuller- like Trojans: Comwar 3.0, Mobler.a, and Acallno.
Comwar 3.0 was the first Comwar variant to use file infecting technologies - the worm searches for other sis files on the phone, and writes itself to these files. This makes it possible for it to spread in yet another way, in addition to its traditional MMS and Bluetooth propagation routines.
Mobler.a was the first cross platform virus capable of infecting both Symbian and Windows systems, proof of concept code from an unknown author. The worm propagates by copying itself from an infected computer to a handset.
"Mobler.a should probably be seen as a new way of attacking personal computers, rather than purely a new way of penetrating mobile phones." believes Alexander Gostev.
The Acallno Trojan, developed by a commercial firm, is designed to spy on the user of a designated telephone, and sends copies of all sent and received SMS messages to a specially configured number.
The other novelty detected in the third quarter of 2006 was Wesber, a Trojan for J2Me; it's the second known Trojan that is capable of functioning both on smartphones and on the vast majority of modern handsets.
In conclusion, Alexander Gostev takes stock of the current situation and looks to the future. The second stage of both virus and antivirus evolution is now complete. Today's virus writers and cyber criminals have adapted to the evolution of today's antivirus industry, and are not currently on the attack. Virus writers find the current reaction times of antivirus companies - which could be a few hours, or even minutes - acceptable, and have come to terms with what they can achieve within the window of opportunity provided. However, this is a state of uneasy equilibrium: as Alexander Gostev states, "if the situation is as I have described it, then something will have to change in the near future. Either antivirus companies will go on the attack, making a new concerted effort to quash the virus uprising, or virus writers will come up with something truly new, raising the bar for the antivirus industry as a whole."
Tags: [mms] [bluetooth] [virus] [symbian] [worm] [kaspersky lab] [trojan] [malware] [kaspersky]
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