Nokia 7610 numbed by skulls

BrianD

The following article is taken from www.electricnews.net

Nokia phones numbed by Skulls
Tuesday, November 23 2004
by Matthew Clark

E-security companies and the maker of the Symbian operating system for mobile phones have issued warnings over a malicious new software program.

Called "Skulls" and affecting Nokia 7610 mobile phones, the malware is capable of rendering an infected handset almost useless. The bug has been discovered on various websites which offer mobile phone add-ons, such as icons, wallpaper and screensavers. It is unclear if the destructive nature of the Skulls program was intentional or accidental.

The most visible impact of the apparent Trojan horse is the replacement of most of an infected phone's program icons with images of skulls and crossbones. More significantly, the bug disables all of the default programs on the phone, including its calendar, phonebook, camera, web browser and SMS applications. The only significant service still available on infected phones are normal phone calls.

Symbian, the maker of the Nokia 7610 operating system, said that Skulls -- which comes in a file named "7610.extended.theme.manager.zip" -- may also affect Nokia phones which run the Symbian-based Series 60 user interface. "Symbian OS phones using the UIQ user interface platform (Sony Ericsson, Motorola, BenQ, Arima) or the NTT DoCoMo FOMA platform (Fujitsu) are believed to be unaffected by this malware," the company said.

The firm was also at pains to point out that users would only be affected if they knowingly and deliberately installed the file, and ignored the warnings that the phone displays once the installation process was initiated.

"Skulls SIS file does not contain any malicious code as such, it is just a Symbian Installation file that installs critical System ROM binaries into C: drive in with exact same names and locations as in the ROM drive," added Finnish e-security company F-Secure, which has also posted removal procedures on its website. The firm says that only phones with third-party file managers installed will be able to remove the bug, while those using Symbian's own file manger must perform a "hard reset," thus losing any data stored on the phone.

Though experts seem to agree that the malware is not a major threat, it is worth remembering that Skulls is the third mobile phone bug to rear its head this year. Earlier malicious programs -- Mosquitoes and Cabir -- were not considered especially dangerous due to low spread, but have nevertheless been hailed as a vision of things to come.

richieg

Does anyone know if the f-secure virus protection that comes on the 6670 protect a phone against skulls?
What virus protection software is available for phones like the 7610?