The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) has developed consumer tips to assist users to protect themselves against the risk of mobile phone viruses.
This guide explains what viruses are, how they spread, and what can be done about them.
What’s a mobile phone virus?
A mobile phone virus or mobile malware - malicious mobile software - is a computer virus specifically adapted for the mobile phone environment and designed to spread from one vulnerable phone to another.
A virus is a program code that replicates by being copied to another program. Viruses can be transmitted as attachments to an email or in a download file. Some viruses take effect as soon as their code is executed; other viruses can lie dormant. A virus that replicates by resending itself as an email attachment or as a part of a network message is known as a worm.
Viruses can range from benign to quite harmful; they can erase data from the infected phone or send fake messages purporting to be from the phones owner. How prevalent are mobile phone viruses? The current security risk from mobile phone viruses and worms is low.
Until many more smart phones or PDAs are in use, and users of these phones are regularly exchanging executable files, the risk will remain low. The mobile industry takes the threat of viruses very seriously and is continually monitoring its networks and working to protect users from any future risk from mobile phone viruses. There are also some simple measures that individual users can implement to protect themselves.
What can I do to protect my phone?
The following tips can help prevent problems with viruses on your phone:
1. Switch to Bluetooth hidden mode. If your phone has Bluetooth capability, ensure that the Bluetooth capability is switched to hidden or invisible mode unless you specifically need it to be visible. This will help prevent other Bluetooth-enabled devices from finding your phone (unless you grant them the necessary permission) and will therefore help protect your phone from worms that spread using the Bluetooth wireless technology.
2. Exercise caution before opening attachments. When accepting applications sent via Bluetooth, or opening MMS attachments, exercise caution, just as you would when opening an email attachment on your PC, because they may include harmful software. Ensure the application or attachment comes from a known source, and is wary of opening files that have unfamiliar text attached to them, even if they come from someone you know.
3. Only download content from a trusted source. Trusted sources may include operator portalsand other well-known brands that offer adequate protection against viruses and other harmful software. Be aware though that, as with emails, malicious or fraudulent users may be able to fake the appearance of a trusted source.
4. Consider anti-virus software. Some software is available to prevent phone viruses. You may wish to consider downloading this software.
5. Contact your phone manufacturer if concerned. If you think you have a virus, call the phone manufacturer’s care line. They can assist you confirm if it is a virus, and help fix the problem.
Virus: A Computer virus is a programme that can infect other programmes by modifying them. A Copy Of virus can deamge a number of programmes. A Virus is like Other programmes. The Only Difference is that it attaches itself to anothor programme and executes secretly every time the host programme is executed. Avisrus has many stages of activity like a dormant phase, propagation phase, triggering phase and execution phase
Worm : A network virus is know as worm. They spread continously from system to sytem.Network Viruses are Difficult to remove.
Bacteria: The bacteria are programmes that do not explicitly demage any file. They replicate or make a large number of copies of rheir own occupy the processor capacity to block the use by the user.
Brain Virus: Brain Virus Was First Virus Developed by the two Pakistani Brothers.
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One of the ways by which a virus can infect your PC is through USB/Pen drives. Common viruses such as ’Ravmon’ , ‘New Folder.exe’, ‘Orkut is banned’ etc are spreading through USB drives. Most anti virus programs are unable to detect them and even if they do, in most cases they are unable to delete the file, only quarantine it. Here are the things which you can do if you want to remove such viruses from your USB Drive
Whenever you plug a USB drive in your system, a window will appear similar to the one shown below
Don’t click on Ok , just choose ‘Cancel’. Open the Command Prompt by typing ‘cmd‘ in the run box. In the command prompt type the drive letter: and press enter . Now type dir /w/a and press enter.
This will display a list of the files in the pen drive. Check whether the following files are there or not
Autorun.inf
Ravmon.exe
New Folder.exe
svchost.exe
Heap41a
or any other exe file which may be suspicious.
If any of the above files are there, then probably the USB drive is infected. In command prompt type attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press enter. This will remove the Read Only, Archive, System and hidden file attribute from all the files. Now just delete the files using the command del filename. example del Ravmon.exe. Delete all the files that are suspicious. To be on a safer side, just scan the USB drive with an anti virus program to check whether it is free of virus or not. Now remove the drive and plug it again. In most of the cases, the real culprit turns out to be the “Autorun.inf” file which mostly gets executed when someone clicks Ok in the dialog window which appears above. Thus the infections can spread
Security Tip
Disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives. If you disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives, then there are lesser chances of the virus spreading. A tool which can perform such a function is Tweak UI. Download it from here install it.
Run the program. Now you can disable the Autoplay feature of the removable drives as shown above. By following the above steps, you can keep your USB drives clean.
A computer virus can cause a lot of destructive damage. VIRUS is an acronym which stands for Vital Information Resources Under Siege. Viruses are sometimes confused with worms and Trojan horses, which are technically different. So, I recommend you to read this article Difference Between a Virus, Trojan Horse and Worm. You just imagine how big organizations, governments, schools,businesses and IT sector were affected when certain viruses attacked their systems.
Computer Virus creates lots of problem in an organization which would result in millions, even billions of dollars in damages and losses. Though not all of these malicious computer programs are massively destructive, there are still some that have caused a lot of damage.Checkout, 6 Techniques used by malware composers to know more about malwares. Here are the top 10 most destructive computer viruses of all time.
1. Bagle
Bagle was detected in 2004, it infected users through an email attachment, and also used email to spread itself. Bagle did not rely on the MS Outlook contact list to make a list of where to send itself. It harvested email addresses from various document files stored in the infected computer – from plain-text files to MS Excel files. The danger of this virus was that its design opened a backdoor where a remote user could gain access and control of the infected computer. It could download additional components to either spy and steal information from the user or launch DDoS attacks to certain networks and computers.
2. Melissa Melissa virus was made in 1999 by David L. Smith, created with Basic program, exactly with Microsoft Word macros. The Melissa virus was mass-mailing malware that was said to have infected up to 20 percent of computers worldwide. This virus spreads via email with the document “Here is That document you asked for, do not show it to anybodey else”. When this file will be opened or clicked it will automatically run the virus replication and automatically send a pass up to the top 50 in the address book of an email. Email servers around the world were forced to shut down in order to prevent the virus from spreading, as well as to remove the virus from their system.Smith was jailed 20 months and fined $ 5,000 and prohibited from accessing the computer without supervision.
3. Sasser
Creator by 17 year old German student, Sven Jaschan in 2004. Sasser attack Microsoft Windows. Sasser does not spread via email. The virus is usually spread through the network. It infected computers by exploiting vulnerability present in both Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines, known as the RPC (Remote Procedure Call) exploit. This will create a computer virus could not be shutdown without unplug the power. Jaschan Finally caught but he’s not jail, was only given probation 1 year 9 months, because at that time still under the age of 18.
4. ILOVEYOU a.k.a. Lovebug/Loveletter Virus
This virus started spreading in the Philippines, these virus classified as worm, which has the ability to do her own replication. Creator Onel de Guzman was from the Philippines. ILOVEYOU spread via email, with the title “love letters” from a secret admirer. Once opened, it loaded itself to the memory, infecting executable files. When a user received and opened the email containing the attachment “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs”, the computer became automatically infected. It then spread itself by infecting *.exe,*.jpg,*.mp3 files. After that, the virus sent itself to others by looking up the addresses contained in the MS Outlook contact list. The virus was written by a Filipino programmer who was still a college student at that time. He said the release of the virus was only “accidental.” This virus spread throughout the world in just a day, infecting computers of large corporations and governments, including the Pentagon in the United States. It caused billions of dollars in damages. The actual “damage” occurred during the removal of the infection from computers, as email servers and computer networks had to be shut down before the virus could be removed.His original file LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT. vbs.
5. MyDome MyDome virus was detected in 2004. This virus is making a backdoor on the OS. Computer was first known attack on first February by doing DDoS. Then reported back to attack on the 12th of Feb, after that the virus stopped spreading and start creating backdoors. MyDoom spreads via email. MyDoom slowed downglobal Internet accessby ten percent, and caused some website access to be reduced by 50%.
6. Leap-A/Oompa- A
Mac that has a concept of security through obscurity, Mac believe thea system can’t be infected by a virus of cause of the OS system is a closed. But in the year 2006, Leap-A virus or commonly known as Oompa-A appears and spreads via iChat on the Mac. Having a Mac attack, the virus will search for contacts via iChat and send messages to each contact. The message will contain a form of corrupt JPEG file. It’s not dangerous, but this proved that the Mac OS systems are not immune to the virus.
7. SQL Slammer
Appeared in January in the year 2003, spread quickly via the Internet. It caused a considerable amount of damage, though, by overwhelming routers, causing them to shut down. The target of this virus was web servers running a vulnerable version of Microsoft SQL Server. Upon infection of a server, the virus generated random IP addresses through which it attempted to further infect other computers.This virus has also been a U.S. Bank ATMs crash, the collapse of Seattle’s 911 service, and Continental Airlines.
8. Nimda
Reported attacks in 2001, call Nimda taken from opposite the word “Admin”. With its multi-pronged attack, Nimda appears to be the most troublesome virus of its type that has yet appeared. Its name (backwards for "admin") apparently refers to an "admin.DLL" file that, when run, continues to propagate the virus.These viruses spread very quickly, according to TruSecure CTO Peter Tippett, Nimda only takes 22 minutes to make the Top Ten Virus at the time. The main target of this virus is Internet servers, Nimda spread through Internet network by creating a backdoor into the OS.
9. Code Red
The world had not yet recovered from the damage caused by the ILOVEYOU virus when Code Red was released in simmer 2001.Code red virus attacks only Windows 2000 & NT OS. This virus will create a buffer becomes full so make the memory becomes full. Once a computer was compromised by the virus, it would modify the handled website, displaying the message “Welcome to http://www.worm.com! Hacked by Chinese!” Then, it would later seek other computers running the web server software and do the same thing. After about two weeks of infection, the virus was programmed to launch DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on certain websites, including the server of the White House.
10. The Klez
This virus was first known infected on 2001, this virus spreads via email by conducting continuous replication, and sent to all email addresses in the victim’s address book. This virus makes the victim computer becomes very slow and can also turn off the antivirus application.
