A Plea for Sanity - The Truth About Symbian OS "Viruses'

[Ewan]

With appallingly-advised sites around the Internet spreading unnecessary fear and alarm, Steve Litchfield issues a plea for sanity over on 3-Lib. it's far, far harder to contract a Symbian OS virus than a desktop one. You're more likely to be hit by lightning or an earthquake. Just say No. And shame on the computing press around the world for all the scaremongering.

[SwitchBlade]

TBH I can't see how they can class these things as Virii, malware yes, but virii no. The definition of a virus involves it being able to spread and multiply attaching itself to other files. This is simply a malware replicator. When they get around to making something that behaves as a real virus that you don't have to say "yes" repeatedly to infect your machine and actually infects things rather than replicating itself only then I'd be afraid.

Another thought is the prevalence of anti-virus software before any known virus for Symbian OS, call me a cynic but something strikes me as a bit odd....

[slitchfield]

Yep. These folks at F-Secure seem very keen on proclaiming Cabir to be 'spreading fast'. Talk about having a vested interest in 20 million suckerXXXXX err, I mean users buying anti-virus software unnecessarily....

Steve Litchfield

[TANKERx]

I was thinking about this very thing the other day and believe that you're right (though I winced a little at the earthquake reference). As far as Symbian Smartphones are concerned, you'd have to want to install the virus to catch it.

The Symbian OS makes a number of checks before you actually install something and only just stops short of actually saying "well, I don't think you should install this so I'm not letting you".