"This is a significant development as until now we've usually found mobile trojans two or three at a time at the most. It would be easy for a malware writer to create 1 trojan and give it 52 different names however this is not the case here where we have 52 separately cracked and infected applications. Somebody has gone to an awful lot of time and effort to turn these out". SimWorks CEO Aaron Davidson said. He also has a theory as to why the virus creators would go to so much trouble.
"Previous mobile viruses have either been able to spread but cause no harm or alternatively have been able cause significant harm but not able to spread. It may be that producing large numbers of harmful trojans such as those we discovered today is a reaction by the writers to their inability to produce destructive viruses that can effectively spread. Obviously by producing large numbers of these things you greatly improve the odds of someone actually downloading and installing them". SimWorks has yet to receive any reports of the 52 trojans identified today in the wild.
"Until reports are received of these trojans in the wild there is little risk to end users" said Davidson. "From all appearances however these are ready to release now and putting all 52 onto a single site would make downloading from it like playing Russian roulette with your phone. Every other file could contain something that could cause your phone to be corrupted requiring a factory reset or worse and the loss of all your contacts and other data". SimWorks advises that the mobile phone users take the usual precautions, including never accepting files from people they do not know and never downloading applications from unknown sources and crack sites.
Source:
Simworks
Thanks to Mr. Davidson (adavidson) for submitting the article to us using the News Submission form.
Written by: James Delahunty @ 20 Apr 2005 18:26
