PDA users need not panic as virus is not in the wild
Virus researchers at Sophos have reported the discovery over the
weekend of the first ever virus to infect the Microsoft Pocket PC
operating system.
The W32/Duts-A
virus infects PDAs running the Pocket PC operating system, and was
written by the 29A virus writing gang who also recently wrote the world's first
mobile phone virus.
The Duts virus does not travel via email, and requires users to
deliberately send it to other Pocket PC PDA owners. If the infected
file is run it displays a message:
"WinCE4.Dust by Ratter/29A"
"Dear User, am I allowed to spread?"
Only if the user agrees will it attempt to infect other
executable programs on the user's PDA.
"Duts is a 'proof-of-concept' virus, and will not spread in the
wild. You're more likely to have a meteorite strike your house than
be hit by this virus," said Carole Theriault, security consultant
for Sophos. "Owners of PDAs running the Pocket PC operating system
should not lose any sleep over this virus, although it might be a
taste of things to come in the future."
The virus contains two messages which do not get displayed:
"This is proof of concept code. Also, i wanted to make avers
happy. The situation when Pocket PC antiviruses detect only EICAR
file had to end ..."
and
"This code arose from the dust of Permutation City"
Permutation City is a novel by science fiction author Greg Egan.
Set in the year 2050 it features a character obsessed with
artificial life who generates computer personalities (known as
"Copies") within a virtual world. The novel has obvious parallels
with computer viruses.
"This virus claims to be written by the Czech virus writer known
as 'Ratter' from the 29A virus writing gang," continued Theriault.
"If Ratter is ever investigated by the authorities it seems likely
that he will prove to be a sci-fi fanatic."
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.