Nerds Now Targeting Cell Phones

By Sam Bakken in News on Apr 4, 2005 7:11PM

Apparently those people that have nothing better to do than concoct ways to fuck up everyone else's digital day are moving on to cell phones. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan issued a consumer alert today warning of the dangers of cell phone viruses. While still rare, the viruses have the ability to crash your cell phone the same way traditional computer viruses cripple your CPU.

The viruses spread through instant messaging software and once a phone is infected it will send the infected messages to everyone in your phone book. Madigan recommends that you immediately delete unsolicited messages from unknown senders. Because of the viruses tendency to spread, she also recommends that you delete messages from friends that use odd subject lines. This sucks for our friends because we know they so enjoy our cleverly absurd subject lines.

Again, don't freak out, the cell phone viruses are still rare. We think the virus she's referring to is the "proof-of-concept" worm Cabir (born in the Philippines), and though it can fuck your phone up, Symantec says containment is easy and that the number of cases is low. For some very interesting history on computer viruses go here—did you know that Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper coined the terms "bug" and "debugging" in 1945 when she found a moth trapped in a Navy computer?