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Piece Provided by TheFeature.com
Handheld Viruses Pack a Big Punch
By Mark Frauenfelder, Jun 04 2001
Viruses got a huge boost when desktop computers began
networking. Your handheld is next.
August 28, 2000 was a bad day for Palm users who
thought they were downloading a program to let them
play games for free. "Crack1.1," a file that was being
traded that day in online chat rooms, was purportedly
designed unlock the shareware limitations of a
Nintendo GameBoy emulator program called Liberty.
But "Crack1.1" was really a malicious Trojan horse
program. When users tapped on the icon it proceeded
to delete all the applications it found on their Palm, and
kept going until the device crashed. After the infection,
users had to re-install the programs and hotsync their
Palm to their PC to restore the applications. Woe to
those who hadn't backed up their Palm's memory - their
programs were gone for good.
The Liberty Trojan horse was quickly traced to a
Swedish software writer who claimed to have
accidentally released it on the Net. Fortunately, the
program did not delete critical user data such as
addresses and appointments. But "Crack1.1" was a
harbinger of more malignant programs to come.
A month later, the very first genuine virus for Palms,
"Palm.Phage.Dropper," appeared. Unlike a Trojan horse
(which is unable to make a copy of itself) viruses can
replicate over and over again. The
"Palm.Phage.Dropper" virus used this capability to
delete both application programs and user data from
Palm computers.
An epidemic emerges
Since then, additional malicious programs have entered
the handheld arena, and as mobile devices become
more popular, the situation is only going to get worse.
With mass market adoption, the risks of virus outbreaks
for mobile devices is a certainty, says Laura
Garcia-Manrique, a senior product manager at
Symantec, a software developer that supports the
world's largest anti-virus research center.
Garcia-Manrique cites several factors pointing to an
imminent plague of worms, viruses, and Trojan horses.
Foremost is the fact that PDAs are becoming
increasingly Internet ready, and therefore more
susceptible to infection. Industry analysts predict that
mobile Internet users will grow by 600 million in the
next two years, and that m-commerce will jump from
$240 million in 2000 to $120 billion by the year 2008.
"The adoption of wireless Internet connections will
make it incredibly easy for viruses to spread from
handheld to handheld," says Garcia-Manrique. "When
that happens, we expect to see an explosion in virus
activity very similar to what we have seen in the PC
world."
Handhelds are also targets for darkside hackers
because they represent unconquered territory. The first
person to create a malignant Palm program on the level
of the Melissa worm (which infected PCs around the
world and caused millions of dollars of damage) will
bask in notoriety. "Virus writers are looking for fame,"
says Garcia-Manrique.
From the desktop to the palmtop
Like PC viruses, Palm viruses carry very destructive
payloads. With names like Phage and Vapor, they're
programmed to do three things: destroy data, replicate,
and spread to other systems. They infect handhelds in
the same ways that normal programs and information is
transmitted to a device.
There are three major routes. You might unknowingly
download a file from the Web or an email attachment
and copy it to your Palm by Hotsyncing it. Or you might
infect your device when someone beams a file to you.
"Our research shows that users are very actively using
the beaming capabilities at trade shows to share
information or new games or applications with friends,"
says Garcia-Manrique.
And the third method of infection, mentioned above, is
by use of a wireless connection to the Internet. "This is
an emerging trend," says Garcia-Manrique. "By using
things like the OmniSky modem or other types of
wireless connections to the Internet, or by using a Palm
VII [which has a built-in wireless modem], you could
download a file directly to your Palm, infecting it with a
virus."
Now that Palm computers are susceptible to viruses,
other wireless devices will soon follow. Already, other
devices that use the Palm operating system, including
Kyocera's mobile phone, are prone to infection. And
other mobile phones are next in line. "For virus writers
there is always the challenge of writing the first virus
for a platform," says Garcia-Manrique. "We expect that
these trends and the appearance of new viruses will
continue to happen."
Mobile phones aren't immune
So far, WAP-enabled devices are fairly safe from
malicious software. WML (Wireless Markup Language)
and WMLScript (Wireless Markup Language Script) are
still too simple for viruses to start cropping up inside.
But as they gain new features and additional services,
it's a sure thing they'll start to get infected with
damage-causing software.
Even now, it's possible for someone to send a Trojan
horse program to your phone that could overload its
memory, causing it to freeze up and require the user to
reset his or her phone. So far, however, no one has
reported finding such a program.
A wireless worm could be especially troublesome for
mobile phone users. For example, if you use your
mobile phone to look at some content on the Web, the
script on the page might send SMS messages to
everyone in your in-phone address book. And the
people who get the message will then be directed to
the same worm-site, which will result in all of their
contacts getting the same SMS message. In short time,
the worm could affect thousands or millions of mobile
phones.
An even more insidious Trojan horse could be
programmed to copy your mobile phone's address book
to a secret website, where the information could be
used by the data thieves for all kinds of nasty business.
Help is on the way
How can you protect yourself from handheld viruses?
Having anti-virus scanning software on your PC (the
one you use to download data and applications to you
handheld) is the first line of defense, but you shouldn't
stop there. Because handhelds can contract viruses via
beaming or the wireless Internet, you should also run
an anti-virus solution on your handheld device, which
will scan its memory for malicious programs.
In April, Symantec began shipping AntiVirus 2001 for
the Palm OS, and McAffee sells a similar product called
VirusScan Wireless, which also scans devices with the
Pocket PC, Windows CE, and Symbian EPOC operating
systems.
And you can bet other anti-virus companies will be
following suit.
Mark Frauenfelder is a writer and illustrator from Los
Angeles.
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