14 DAY TRIAL // The tour of viruses for mobiles has reached 20 countries in the entire world. F-Secure announces that ?The virus Cabir has been already detected in 20 countries, among which: United States, China and Rusia. These are the area where the virus has the largest spreading area, but Cabir has been recently detected in Luxemburg and Olanda".
First spotted in June last year, the worm Cabir was created in Philippines to attack mobile phones running Symbian OS. The intruder uses Bluetooth connection to detect nearby vulnerable mobile devices; after it concludes this operation, the next step is to establish a direct connection and to transmit itself onto those systems.
Cabir had a relatively slow spreading rate because was restrained by the specifications of the Bluetooth technology. Moreover, the virus becomes active only after the user restarts the infected phone.
Although the spreading area is limited to 10 meters (imposed by the Bluetooth technology), Cabir has succeeded in transmitting itself over a large area due to the large number of users from the corporate domain who own state of the art terminals and who travel in the world.
However, the spreading is not accomplished independently of the user's action, who is asked if he accepts the connection with another terminal which has already been infected, then the user has to accept the transfer and to run the file. Despite of these obstacles, Cabir succeeded an impressive "performance", the main cause being the ignorance of users who accept any connection hoping that they will get free backgrounds, ring tones and screensavers.
The good news is that despite the high number of infections, Cabir doesn't cause too many damages; it only depletes the battery and blocks a few applications.