Infecting A Policeman’s Phone

I’ve been a bit skeptical of the danger of mobile phone viruses — at least for the time being — but I had to chuckle at this one.

Mikko Hypponen, director research at F-Secure tells in a recent email of giving a presentation on mobile viruses at Interpol’s 6th International Conference on Cyber Crime in Cairo, Egypt. There

one of the local police officers approached me. He wanted to ask about suspicious activity on his Nokia 6600.

I had a look and – get this – his personal phone was infected with Cabir.B! So basically, he was walking around the secure conference area with a live virus on his phone while dozens of people from all over the world were constantly walking around him.

Mikko says that brings to 16 the number of countries where the Cabir worm — Cabir is a worm that runs on Symbian Series 60 devices and replicates over Bluetooth. It comes to phones messaging inbox as caribe.sis file, that contains the worm — has been sighted.

Indeed, Cabir is nearly a year old. Since then several other Symbian worms and viruses have been found. Check out this list. I don’t see this as a major threat, but if true, it’s funny that at least one cop is walking around a cybersecurity conference with an infected phone.