Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned
users of Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP) to think twice about
"modding" their handheld games console after the discovery of the
first malicious Trojan horse for the platform.
The Troj/PSPBrick-A Trojan
horse, which poses as a hack or "mod" to allow users to run
unauthorized and "homebrewed" software, actually deletes essential
system files on the PSP and renders it unbootable.
"The good news is that you are extremely unlikely to have your
shiny new PSP affected by this Trojan horse unless you're
intentionally trying to 'mod' it to run unauthorized software. It
isn't a virus, and cannot spread under its own steam," said
Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant for Sophos. "However, if you are
unfortunate enough to run this Trojan horse you will be turning
your new toy into an expensive lump of black plastic."
Users of Sophos anti-virus products were
automatically protected against the new Trojan horse.
"Fortunately, the existence of this Trojan horse does not mean
that you need to run anti-virus software on your games console,"
continued Cluley. "Anti-virus protection on your desktop PC should
be perfectly capable of detecting the PSPBrick Trojan horse if it
is downloaded from the internet, before it is installed on the Sony
PSP."
Sophos continues to recommend that users exercise caution about
what software they run on their computers, and run the very latest
security software.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.