Virus threat moves to mobile phones

Following the recent outbreak of the Love Bug on PCs, a new virus that sends unwanted text messages to mobile phones has been reported in Europe.

The virus, called I-Worm Timofonica or VBS Timofonica, is a Visual Basic Script (VBS) that uses Microsoft Outlook to spread in a similar way to the Love Bug, which caused billions of pounds worth of damage worldwide last month.

Although there have been very few reports of infections, antivirus product vendors said the virus is interesting because it specifically targets mobile phones.

The worm arrives via email on your PC with the subject line TIMOFONICA, the message "Es de todos ya conocido el monpolio de Telefonica pero no tan ...", and an attachment called TIMOFONICA.TXT.vbs.

According to antivirus firm Sophos, a VBS script is executed if a user attempts to open the attachment. The script will edit the Windows Registry to replace a file called smos.com in the Run command. Later, it will write the file cmos.com into the Systems directory. This file will overwrite your PC's CMOS settings and delete any partition tables that it finds.

The virus then sends a copy of itself to everyone in the user's Outlook address book and a text - short messaging service - message to users of Telefonica's mobile service.

However, experts said that the virus is unlikely to spread in non-Spanish-speaking countries.

Mikko Hypponon, antivirus research manager at F-Secure, said: "This seems to be a political virus. Apparently, the virus is a protest against the Telefonica company and it attempts to do this by sending the message directly to people's mobile phones. This is not a mobile phone virus - it does not spread through phones, it just sends annoying messages to them."

Graham Cluely, head of corporate communications at Sophos, said this is not the first virus to appear on mobile phones.

"Because the Love Bug uses Outlook to spread, it sent itself out to some mobile phones because some people had SMS addresses in the address field in Outlook," he said. "There is no way it can infect your phone, and even the latest Wap phones don't have a powerful enough operating system to get infected with a virus."

Meanwhile, James Moran, director of security at the GSM Association, said in a statement: "The so-called Timofonica virus is typical of the newer email variety being spread via personal computers. It is not capable of infecting or harming mobile phones, just as it is not capable of propagating further via mobile to mobile, or mobile to computer transmission."

"Customers can be assured that the integrity of the GSM system is not threatened by these claims," he added.

See also:

Malicious Trojan infects Windows Media Player

Downloads malicious application when video files are run  11 Jan 2005

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!