I.T. Vibe - Two new Cabir worms target mobile phones

Experts at anti-virus firm Sophos have confirmed that the source code to the Cabir family of mobile phone viruses has been released on the Internet.

A 32-year-old Brazilian programmer has published the source code for the viruses, and warned that other virus writers may use it to create their own variants. In a statement on his web site, he claims to have written the worms from scratch because so many people had contacted him asking if he had the source code for the original Cabir worm.

Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant for Sophos said,

"Publishing virus source code on the web is dangerous because it encourages others to create malware. Although viruses for mobile phones have to date been creating more hype than havoc, it's possible that more malicious people will now be investigating ways to infect cellphones. All users should be very careful about what applications they allow to install and run on their mobile device."

Users are being advised not to panic following the discovery of two new variants which are capable of infecting smartphones.

The Symb/Cabir-H and Symb/Cabir-I worms attempt to send themselves to Bluetooth-enabled smartphones found in the proximity of the infected mobile phone. The user of the receiving device has to accept the file and then manually install it in order to infect the phone.

Comment # 1 on 29 December 2004 at 17:33 by Anonymous

The Brazillian should be held globally responsible for all infections, totally irresponsible to publish the source code on a site.

Writing codes for a virus is a good tech skill no question...but the point of a virus is what......???...to get some perverse joy from seeing the destruction of what others have, or a huge ego trip when you see your name in the media as the dick head responsible...

Wow...Go dickheads!!!!!!

Cabir worm source code released