Nokia E90 A Bit Harder to Infect with Bluetooth Worms
Mobile Phones
- August 9th, 2007
An internal colleague shared this with me. I thought it might be worth showing here. The video shows the difference between a Nokia E60 and a Nokia E90 and how they react to receiving a Bluetooth message. This particular Bluetooth message is a worm that is propagating–a message I’m sure you could do without.
While the virus demonstrated here is unlikely to infect a S60 3rd Edition phone, you never know what evil may be lurking out there. I recommend not accepting Bluetooth messages from people you don’t know and are not expecting. If you’ve run into this or similar issues, share your thoughts in the comments.
“Unlikely”??? Splutter.
It’s impossible, full stop. How can a S60 2nd Edition malware app even install on a S60 3rd Edition device? And the latter, of course, has Symbian OS 9 and malware, even it were to be created, couldn’t propagate successfully.
A useful pointer to some changed behaviour in S60 3rd Edition FP1 from F-Secure here, but everyone out there should remember that THERE ISN’T A SINGLE KNOWN VIRUS, EVEN IN THE LABS, FOR S60 3RD EDITION. NOT ONE. Because such a propagating app would be impossible, etc.
Shouldn’t it be S60, instead of Series 60?
Why would such an application be impossible? Application can send an installation package to another device, the user can install it and it can propagate. It’s that simple.
The difference is whether we know who made it and what it can do. But propagation isn’t a big problem since people will say yes to almost anything
No, you miss the point about the OS 9 ‘Platform Security’. Any application attempting to propagate using Bluetooth or Internet would have to pop up so many ‘allow’ messages to the user that they’d get very quickly alerted. And thus any purpose-written malware would get stopped in its tracks immediately.
Virus propagation only really happens where it can take place invisibly (as on PCs) or at least with minimal interruption to the user.
I want to welcome you to the S60 blogs!
And also point out that the community is pretty… “brutally honest” (as Stefan C. once said). Also most are 100% sure that their S60 phone will never get infected.
Ok, I have two questions about the video:
1 Could you simply turn off (power button or battery out) the phone and then it would stop asking? AND
2 What if you do accept that message. In the old phones the message opens automatically. What about the new one? I believe this should be fixed so that you have to open it inside Messages (don’t know if this is a good idea or not) and/or that S60 would have a non-visible virus protection (I DONT want another app/icon except in Settings) that can say that it may be a virus (if the phone really thinks so) and if I still want to open it.
BTW: Viruses and S60 is one of the HOTTEST topics (in terms of strong opinion) in the S60 blogosphere and you hit it right on
http://www.s60tv.com
You’re right, it’s S60. Second time I did that.
Now corrected.
Just because there doesn’t appear to be a way for a virus to propagate on S60 3rd Edition, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. One should never cease to be vigilant against that stuff.
The main point of the video is that Nokia has improved the “handling” of this particular situation–the constant Bluetooth prompting. One can hope that change will propagate through the product line.
I love the discussion this has generated. Keep the cards and letters coming, folks!
To me, it was a surprise why Nokia have been waiting with this, seemingly trivial, solution that the software remembers the user’s previous answer? But it’s now history, but anyway, I think it would perfectly make sense to inject this feature back to older releases. I know that it’s pain-in-the-, but based on what you wrote, PhoneBoy, you would save your users from a lot of trouble.
I have to say I’m 100% behind Steve on this one. The only thing that anti-virus is good for, on S60v3 especially, is to suck up RAM and battery life, two things which are already in high demand.
A 2nd Edition application can’t install on a 3rd Edition device due to the binary break, so that’s a moot point already.
Also, rather than install a 3rd party app, one could merely set their bluetooth to “hidden”, and it’s done, safe.
There’s just too many easy fixes and not a single *real world* case of a 3rd Edition virus.
The reason a second edition app won’t install on third edition is more related to application signing, which is mandatory on 3rd Edition, but optional on 2nd Edition.
That’s partly true. Or rather not. There was a substantial change from 2nd Ed to 3rd Ed that concerned binary format, source and binary compatibility and lots of other things as well. THAT is the reason why an application written for 2nd Ed won’t install on a 3rd Ed device. Even if it’s signed.
Then I stand corrected. Mobile phones isn’t my day job.