Worm ready to infect smart phones

Antivirus companies on Monday raced to decipher the workings of the first worm to target smart phones, while saying that the current incarnation of the program poses little threat.

The worm program, dubbed Cabir by Russian antivirus company Kaspersky, apparently uses the Bluetooth short-range wireless feature of smart phones that run the Symbian operating system to detect other Symbian phones, and then transfers itself to the new host as a package file. While able to replicate the spread of the virus in research settings, antivirus companies have not found any evidence that the program is infecting smart phones outside of those limited test cases.


Antivirus companies were apparently sent a copy of the worm from the group that created it. While the program does not do anything but spread, and has not yet been detected among the public's phones, Gullotto believes that other virus writers may use the worm as a departure point for their own development.

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