News

Spanish police and the "moby" mobile virus: no understatement

by Bill Ray & John Oates | posted on 25 June 2007

Spanish police arrested a 28-year old man on Saturday - the man they suspect of involvement with a mobile phone virus.

He is suspected of distributing malware which targetted Symbian phones. The arrest follows a seven month investigation.

French news agency AFP said it was the first time a mobile virus creator had been arrested in Spain.

Spanish police are hardly playing down the arrest, claiming that the virus, which was propagated over Bluetooth connection, infected 115,000 Symbian handsets and cost users and their network operators millions of euros.

The only infection for which such claims wouldn't be laughable is a virus called Commwarrior, which did spread rapidly around Spain last year. In common with most Bluetooth infections, infection is far from automatic. Users are required to accept the message, and agree to install the software, before any damage is done, and that damage is generally limited to propagation of the virus.

Quite why this cost millions of euros isn't clear; but cynics might feel that claiming that "a few people were inconvenienced" would hardly justify the 7-month investigation.

More details here, while F-Secure and O2 both detail the virus http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/commwarrior.shtml and http://www.02.com/cr/comwarrior.asp