Information Security News: Sophos Debunks Mobile Phone Virus Hoax

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.computeruser.com/news/00/06/24/news5.html

By: Sylvia Dennis, Newsbytes
June 24, 2000

Anti-virus specialist Sophos has reported a hoax virus message "doing
the rounds."

The message's text warns of a virus which displays the message
"!?UNAVAILABLE!?" on your a phone screen and falsely references Sophos
Anti-Virus and intY, an Internet service provider (ISP), in an attempt
to make the hoax seem genuine.

Sophos said that it defines hoaxes as false virus warnings describing
extremely dangerous non-existent viruses.

In this case, the firm said, 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, Sophos added, because
of the amount of e-mail bandwidth they take up when users are asked to
forward them to everyone they know.

Graham Cluley, Sophos' senior technology consultant, said there are no
mobile phone viruses - mobile phones simply are not powerful enough in
computing terms to be infected by viruses.

"Hoaxes are a real problem to companies. Our technical support desk
still receives more calls about hoaxes than about genuine viruses," he
said.

Sophos' Web site is at http://sophos.com

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