| 21st April 2005 - SimWorks, a U.S. based security firm
has announced that it has discovered fifty-two new viruses
that affect series 60 mobile phones using the Symbian
operating system. The recently found Trojans are mostly
hidden in games meant for smartphones.
According to Aaron Davidson, chief executive of SimWorks,
this find has almost doubled the number of Trojans found
for the Symbian operating system. Earlier the viruses
found for the phone were only one or two at a time.
However, several security vendors say that the risk
due to these viruses was quite low as none of them were
found to be easily downloaded by users. But, Davidson
adds that though currently the risk of these Trojans
spreading maybe low, a large number of these viruses
being around may increase the odds of them spreading.
The report claims that the Trojans appear to be cracked
versions of popular Symbian applications such as BitStorm,
BugMe!, Cosmic Fighter, 3D Motoracer and SplashID.
Trojans for mobile phones are similar to computer viruses
and have the capability to corrupt the phone, requiring
factory resetting which may cause users to lose data,
while some viruses may even begin sending photo messages
to all contacts in the memory.
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-secure
security firm said that though these numbers maybe considerably
huge, the possibility of the user getting his mobile
infected with one of these viruses is still less.
SimWorks has advised users to avoid accepting files
from unknown people or downloading applications for
the mobile phone from crack sites.
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