MIT Technology Review Subscribe

A Neat Little Primer on the History of Mobile Viruses

A three-part blog series from antivirus software maker Norton details the surprisingly long history of mobile malware.

Mobile Security, a mobile seucrity news site maintained by Symantec’s Norton antivirus business, has published an interesting three-part blog series on the origins and rise of mobile malware–an issue that’s increasingly important as more and more of us snatch up smartphones and tablets.

There are a number of neat tidbits mentioned in the posts, such as the fact that mobile malware first emerged nearly nine years ago, in June 2004, when security researchers received copies of Cabir, a mobile worm written in C++ that targeted the Symbian operating system. Cabir spread via Bluetooth, adding a file to the phone, and was actually quite benign: when you turned on the phone, it showed the word “Caribe” on the screen. Cabir wasn’t released to infect consumers’ phones, but it was used by hackers to build other viruses that emerged shortly thereafter.

Advertisement

If you’d like to check out all three posts, you can find them here, here, and here.

This story is only available to subscribers.

Don’t settle for half the story.
Get paywall-free access to technology news for the here and now.

Subscribe now Already a subscriber? Sign in
You’ve read all your free stories.

MIT Technology Review provides an intelligent and independent filter for the flood of information about technology.

Subscribe now Already a subscriber? Sign in
This is your last free story.
Sign in Subscribe now

Your daily newsletter about what’s up in emerging technology from MIT Technology Review.

Please, enter a valid email.
Privacy Policy
Submitting...
There was an error submitting the request.
Thanks for signing up!

Our most popular stories

Advertisement