22 Sep 2000
Phage virus low threat to Palm users
Sophos advises that the first virus to infect the Palm operating
system poses only a small threat to users.
The Palm/Phage
virus (also known as PalmOS/Phage or PalmOS/Phage.963) infects Palm
applications.
Recovery from this virus is possible by resetting your Palm and
restoring its contents from a backup. Please note that by default
Palms do not backup applications, only data. Sophos recommends that
users keep a backup of their Palm applications as well as data.
At the time of writing the Phage virus has not been reported in
the wild. Sophos researchers believe the virus is extremely
unlikely to become widespread. However, Sophos has issued a
virus identity (IDE) file to protect
against it because of the media interest. This IDE will be
incorporated into the main shipping product in version 3.39.
"It has always been possible to write malicious software for the
Palm operating system," said Graham Cluley, senior technology
consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "This virus is a very low threat
to Palm users. Those PDA users who follow safe computing guidelines
are highly unlikely to be seriously affected. It remains to be seen
if this is the first of many such viruses on palmtop
computers."
About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.