A variant of the Skulls Trojan horse has surfaced and now carries the Cabir.B cellphone worm.
Once a user is infected with the Skulls.B Trojan, the Cabir.B worm then looks to spread to other phones within broadcasting range using Bluetooth, said security company F-Secure.
However, the virus poses a minimal threat and cellphone viruses are unlikely to cause any real damage in the near future, says Y3K executive director Ryan Price. "In order to get infected with this variant, a user would need to have set their Bluetooth-enabled phone to scan for all external Bluetooth frequencies, which people seldom do.
"They would then have to accept an unsolicited message from an infected phone, while still in Bluetooth range of that phone, in order to get infected. Basically, you would have to be stupid to get this virus."
Once infected, it would take a minimal amount of time and effort to remove it, adds Price.
Although the virus is not likely to cause any damage, it is noteworthy that it uses Bluetooth technology in order to spread, albeit crudely. With almost all the latest phones featuring this technology, Price believes it could be a problem in the coming years.
While there has been much media coverage of cellphone viruses recently, Price says the viruses are still ineffective, adding that users need not worry about anti-virus software on their phones yet.
"Some vendors are already offering this, but I think that is just some vendors hyping it in order to create demand.
"We will only really need anti-virus on our phones when they are connected to the Net all the time. I would say it will probably take about two to three years before we will need it."
Share