A virus that spreads from cell phone to cell phone has made its way to 20 different countries around the world, a Finnish anti-virus expert said on Friday. "The Cabir virus has now been detected in 20 different countries... including in the US, China and Russia... We found the virus in Luxembourg two days ago and in the Netherlands two weeks ago," said Mikko Hyppoenen, head of anti-virus research at Finnish Internet security firm F-Secure. The virus, which was first discovered last June, spreads only over bluetooth, a short-range radio technology for Internet and mobile devices.
"Once you have one infected phone it will try to beam itself to other compatible phones... This virus is only travelling when people travel the world," Hyppoenen pointed out.
The virus does not spread easily however, since the recipient has to first accept a request for his or her phone to connect with a nearby phone, then accept to download a file from that phone, amidst warnings that the file could be infected.
"There are so many steps that it's strange this thing is spreading at all, but I guess with about one billion mobile phones in the world there are going to be people who accept the virus," Hyppoenen said.
The virus does not do much harm once it infects a phone besides trying to spread to other devices, but "it does have side effects though. The phone's battery life gets really lousy, since it's always seeking another phone to connect with," Hyppoenen said.
While the virus is spreading, he insists that the problem still remains inconsequential with maximum a few thousand phones infected world-wide.
"There are anti-viruses available, but the risk is still very small. Eventually though we'll all have anti-viruses on our phones," Hyppoenen said, adding that the Cabir is the largest of more than 50 different mobile phone viruses in the world today.
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