Mobile Phone Malware

hantakage

Hey I'm putting together a series of blogs on Mobile Phone malware and I was wondering if people are interested in this stuff. If you are interested, i'm specifically wondering if people would find indepth low-level articles, or higher level stuff.

I'd also love to know if anyone here has ever been infected by one in the wild. They nearly all infect Symbian devices only, but there are a handful that are Java based (like the one in the first post) or which run on Windows Mobile.

The first one is at http://digg.com/security/Mobile_Malware_SMS_Trojans_Part_I

In reality does anyone here use their phone to surf the web (through extorionate rates from O2/Vodafone ) - or even use it for banking etc. I've been noticing more sim-free smartphones in shops in Ireland recently, so people must actually be buying them.

Anyhow - any feedback would be great

Martyr

rootkits for phones exist, would be interested in that.
IMO most if not all viruses for symbian are based on vallez example.

it would appear anyone doing research into malware for mobile devices these days, is keeping a low profile, same thing goes for rootkit development on desktops.

when a malware researcher releases code, guaranteed, someone will modify it, contribute buggy code (if its not buggy already), give it a new name, (copyright essential), upload online, go to forum, brag about how cool and innovative it is.. "i just wrote this today"

then half-dozen other people do the same..so its all crap, exactly the same code, just a different name..its really tiring.

even the rootkit guru himself, hoglund..his whole book was full of source code from regmon by mark russinovich at sysinternals.
mark wasn't given credit at all, but i don't think he cared anyway.

point is, the more well known rootkits today are based on mark russinovichs research into nt internals 10 years ago, its all outdated.

IMO the attitude today is more against sharing knowledge on malware, which wasn't so much true 5 or 6 years ago..but i say again, there hasn't really been much development in rootkits, correct me if i'm wrong!

i don't think we've seen anything too threatening to date, i'm not saying complex mobile malware doesn't exist, but until the head-honcho researchers 'sell out' so to speak..are we really to see anything at all?

anyway, anything 'good' in the wild would never be detected by all the virus scanners, hips, firewalls out there today put together.

all in my opinion, of course!

Martyr

Mobile rumours from mosques

Meanwhile, in Lahore, Jinnah Hospital doctors treated two patients claiming to be infected by the “deadly phone virus” after listening to phone calls on their cell phones.The patients said that they needed immediate medical attention.

Martyr

not completely low-level, but..the forum is worth a look itself.
reverse-engineering the firmware, or atleast trying to exploit the open source competitors would be opportunity to infect phones on a larger scale.

http://nokiafree.org/forums/t82376/s.html

the forum, i'd say some here already know about, but for those who don't and interested in technical info about phones, check it out.

http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/

Martyr

found interesting video called How To Tell If Your Cell Phone Is Bugged

hantakage

Second part is up

http://robertmcardle.com/blog//index.php?blog=3&title=mobile_malware_sms_trojans_part_ii_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

This one goes into detail on the latest SMS Trojan - SymbOS.Viver . I'll be finishing these up with Trojan.Redbrowser next week.

Any suggestions / comments are most welcome

Martyr

there were some rumours that it was vallez/29a, when a story about a spanish 28 year old man was arrested last week for spreading mobile viruses..
this is someone else.