About That Cell Phone 'Virus'

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36843,00.html

by Lynn Burke
3:00 a.m. Jun. 8, 2000 PDT

It's almost pass to debunk the import of viruses these days. But the
wireless Timofonica worm - which is ending up in more media accounts
than it is in cell phones - deserves some debunking anyway.

Here's the thing: So far, the wireless worm hasn't hurt anyone, hasn't
"crashed" any cell phones, and hasn't cost businesses worldwide the
usual estimated billions of dollars.

And contrary to the image of an invisible beast replicating itself
inside a cell phone that is being bandied about the Internet, this
worm is a run-of-the-mill text-based message that works by attaching
itself to good, old-fashioned email messages.

Imagine.

It's also worth noting that the Timofonica worm seems to be contained
specifically to Spanish phone company Telefonica's cell phone system.
In other words, the cell phones of U.S. citizens are safe as long as
they remain in this country with their red-blooded peers.

That said, the worm does set itself apart from its predecessors by its
overt political motivations. The message showing up on tiny cell phone
screens rails against Telefonica's business practices and its recent
acquisition of Lycos, the parent company of Wired News.

"It's definitely one of the more political ones we've seen," said
Elias Levy, security expert and CTO of SecurityFocus.com.

David Emery, an Internet folklore expert who maintains About.com's
Urban Legends and Folklore guide, said the worm's political bent is
unusual.

"Other than the fact that virus writers tend to have sort of an
anarchical bent, it's pretty atypical that someone creates a virus for
political purposes," he said.

Even if one considered the sweeping denial-of-service attacks that hit
major companies in February to be politically motivated, he said, the
message was more of a monolithic, anti-big-business one. This message
is very specifically anti-Telefonica.

The message, as intercepted by security company F-Secure (which is,
incidentally, making a concerted effort to push its WAP security
wares, decries Telefonica, and offers readers "proof" that the
telephone giant is doing dirty business. In order to see the proof,
however, users have to click on a (disguised) vbs file.

Thus the "virus."


*-------------------------------------------------*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
Intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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C4I Secure Solutions             http://www.c4i.org
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