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Paromita Pain

A look at viruses that target your mobile phone.

Patrik Runald

Venu Palakirti

Mobile viruses aren’t new but they are getting more insidious and your zany phone could start behaving like your favourite laptop — just when it’s about to crash or in the middle of it.

Patrik Runald, Senior Security Specialist, F-Secure Security Labs, Kuala Lumpur, and Venu Palakirti, Sales Director, India Region, F-Secure Corporation, throw light on what these viruses do and some safety measures. Excerpts:

What are the different kinds of viruses that affect mobiles? Which phones are affected the most?

Right now, there are 359 types of viruses targeting mobile devices. About 97 per cent of these target the Symbian operating system (operating system for mobile devices), which is used primarily by Nokia but also in certain devices by Samsung, Panasonic and Siemens. The effects of these viruses vary, but these are some we’ve seen: spread via Bluetooth, spread via MMS (which means the user has to pay for it), overwrite system applications which means you have to restore the phone to factory default settings and lose all your data, spread using MMC cards, some dropping PC viruses, spy on your phone calls and text messages.

Manufacturers currently using Symbian OS are primarily Nokia and Ericsson but some others also have devices running Symbian OS such as Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens AG. As an operating system, it is designed to be secure while still on open platform which enables third-party developers to develop their own applications.

On top of the base operating system, there are a few different user-interfaces such as S60 (Nokia), UIQ (Ericsson), MOAP (NTT DoCoMo), among others.

We typically wouldn’t call the devices targeted as ’high-end’ devices but we would call them smart phones, that is phones that can install third-party non-Java applications.

While over 97 per cent of all known viruses target Symbian OS S60 (they don’t work on UIQ or MOAP) it doesn’t mean that Symbian OS S60 has less security than for example a Windows Mobile. The bad guys are creating viruses for the market leader, which is Symbian, which have a market share of the smart phone market of about 70 per cent. We’re seeing the same scenario in the PC world where Windows is the most targeted operating system. Not necessarily because it’s less secure but because of it’s huge market share.

There are also a few targeting Windows based devices and two working in Java (although geographically limited to Russia as they send premium rate SMS messages to a number in Russia).

How will I know a virus has attacked my mobile?

It depends on the virus. In the case of Commwarrior, one of the most common viruses out there, the operator logo might change to a logo, which says ’Infected by CommWarrior’. Commwarrior sends MMS messages to the contacts in the phone’s address book.

By so doing, the virus has the potential to spread globally. So far, however, it has failed to do so and is replicating slowly, an anomaly being carefully investigated. First indications suggest that the virus is Russian in origin, as it contains text that says ‘OTMOP03KAM HET!’ which roughly translates as ‘No to brain deads’. CommWarrior creates unwanted billing for the owners of infected phones by sending MMS messages without user interaction. In the case of Cabir, the other very common virus, you wouldn’t see any visual effect as it spreads using Bluetooth and typically drains the battery in a few hours.

The virus Skulls could replace your menu-icons with skulls. Skulls is a malicious SIS file trojan that will replace the system applications with non-functional versions, so that all but the phone functionality will be disabled.

The technology in the mobile viruses hasn’t really changed that much over the years. The biggest development has really been on the spyware side where we now have several products that will spy on your phone calls and text messages.

How can the data on mobiles be better protected?

The easiest way to protect yourself is to install an anti-virus product for your mobile phone.

We released our first mobile anti-virus product back in 2001 and have since then continued to develop the solution to include a firewall to prevent hacking when using public Wi-Fi hotspots. F-Secure Mobile AntiVirus can already detect Commwarrior in an update made within two hours of its detection. In the event that a user’s Symbian Series 60 phone is not running the F-Secure client, it is advisable not to install unknown applications arriving in MMS messages and keep the Bluetooth in undiscoverable mode.

Also, not running unknown applications in your phone will help. All the viruses we’ve seen, except very few, will ask the user lots of questions when installing as they can not bypass the built-in security in the devices.

How can mobile phone companies educate the end user on such attacks better?

Mobile phone companies are offering evaluation versions of solutions to educate the end user on the benefits of using mobile security solutions. Nokia has started bundling F-secure mobile security solutions along with its N-series models.

paromita@thehindu.co.in

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