Memory Cards of 3,000 Phones Infected By Malware 63
itwbennett sends us a few links from IT World tracing a story about infected microSD cards in Vodaphone-supplied mobile phones. "The original report came on March 8 after an employee of Panda Security plugged a newly ordered HTC Magic phone from Vodafone into a Windows computer, where it triggered an alert from the antivirus software. Further inspection of the phone found the device's 8GB microSD memory card was infected with a client for the now-defunct Mariposa botnet, the Conficker worm, and a password stealer for the Lineage game. At that point it was at thought to be an issue with a specific refurbished phone. On Wednesday another phone surfaced with traces of the Mariposa botnet. And now Vodafone is saying that as many as 3,000 HTC Magic phones may be affected."
Re:iPhone pwnz (Score:5, Informative)
this wasn't software downloaded from the internet for the phone, it appears the card was infected before it was put into the phone. the code wouldn't even execute on the phone, only if you plugged the phone into your computer and mounted the sd card. thus the walled garden wouldn't protect you and is completely unrelated.
Re:3,000 sounds like an arbitrary number (Score:3, Informative)
"Official system requirements were an Intel 80386 DX CPU of any speed, 4 MB of system RAM, and 120 MB of hard drive space."
Re:3,000 sounds like an arbitrary number (Score:3, Informative)
"This configuration was distinctly suboptimal for any productive use..... if any networking or similar components were installed the system would refuse to boot with 4 megabytes of RAM. To achieve optimal performance, Microsoft recommends an Intel 80486 or compatible microprocessor with at least 8 MB of RAM."
Apparently even back then Microsoft was taking the ACTUAL requirements, and dividing them in half, like when they claimed Vista would work on 1/2 gig of RAM when it clearly could not.
Similiar Experience (Score:3, Informative)
I purchased a digital picture frame made by Insignia in 2008. When Plugged into my PC my AV(Nod32 Eset) found two files it listed as viruses. After removing them, the picture frame worked fine.
About a month later Insignia sent a letter explaining there may have been viruses on the internal memory of the frame.I think this happens quite a bit.