Spanish police arrest moby virus writer
No one expects the moby-virus police
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Spanish police arrested a 28-year old man on Saturday they suspect of involvement with a mobile phone virus.
He is suspected of distributing malware which targetted Symbian phones. The arrest follows a seven month investigation.
AFP said it was the first time a mobile virus creator had been arrested in Spain.
Spanish police are claiming that the virus, which was propagated over Bluetooth connection, infected 115,000 Symbian handsets and cost users and their network operators millions of euros.
The only infection for which such claims aren't laughable is called Commwarrior, which did spread rapidly around Spain last year. In common with most Bluetooth infections users are required to accept the message, and agree to install the software, before any damage is done, and that damage is generally limited to propagation of the virus.
Quite why this cost millions of euros isn't clear; but claiming that a few people were inconvenienced would hardly justify the 7-month investigation.
More details here here, while F-Secure and O2 both detail the virus here and here.®
COMMENTS
*Everyone* expects the spanish moby police...
...it's the bleeding spanish moby inquisition they don't suspect, innit?
Sheesh. No wonder civilisation is going to the dogs if we can't even preserve our cultural heritage right. What's it gonna be next? "This is an ex-duck"? "And now for something moderately similar"? "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say the first thing that comes into your head"?
As Shakespeare would have said, "To be or to snuff it? Wot-evva!"
Bah, hambug!
Re: Time spend ass covering * hourly rate = mucho dinero
If this thing spreads via MMS as well as via bluetooth as the information on f-secure.com and o2.com tends to suggest, then it's costing *someone* a lot of money. There are roughly 300 phone numbers and e-mail addresses in my phone's contact list. At 0.30€ a pop that's about 90€ if ever I were stupid enough to accept and install something that came unsolicited out of the blue.
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