07 Nov 2000
Unavailable is unbelievable!
Sophos advises of mobile phone virus hoax
Sophos, one of the world's leading anti-virus developers, has
issued an advisory today about a hoax virus message which is being
distributed via email. A number of media organisations have written
about the threat, believing it to be true.
The hoax text, which is being forwarded via email by innocent
users, warns of a virus which displays the message "UNAVAILABLE" on
your mobile phone screen.
Hoaxes are false virus warnings describing extremely dangerous
non-existent viruses. In this case, the hoax warns that a virus
will remove all information from the phone and render it useless.
Hoaxes often cause as much of a problem as genuine viruses because
of the amount of email bandwidth they take up when users are asked
to forward them to everyone they know.
"There are no mobile phone viruses - mobile phones simply are
not powerful enough yet to be infected by viruses," said Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "Hoaxes
are a real problem to companies. Our technical support desk still
receives more calls about hoaxes than about genuine viruses."
Sophos recommends companies adopt an anti-hoax policy to help
contain the problem.
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 security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.