Cell Phone Virus

Ganesh Viramuthu, The City College of New York

Abstract

Most recently cell phones have become the target of malicious coding, better known as viruses. Right now there are approximately 2 billion cell phones being used around the world. Cell phone usage has grown at a staggering rate and so has the technology used in these cell phones. These technologies are allowing users to store personal and financial information, two things hackers would love to get their hands on. PDA’s and Smart Phones, while giving its users more options than any other mobile device, have also opened many gateways for viruses such as Bluetooth, SMS and MMS. Current viruses range from the fairly harmless Cabir worm, a concept virus used to draw attention to the vulnerabilities of cell phones, to the destructive Skulls virus, which overwrites numerous operating system files rendering its features other than normal calling useless. I will give an analysis of the major viruses targeting the Symbian OS, detailing their procedures, effect on the phone and what antivirus companies are doing about them. I will also introduce the software I developed as a Capstone project aimed at removing and stopping the spread of the Cabir worm and discuss ways in which it can be improved upon.

Biography

Ganesh Viramuthu is an undergraduate student at The City College of New York majoring in Computer Science. He has done extensive research on cell phone viruses and has worked under the guidance of Prof. Izidor Gertner in developing software capable of stopping these viruses.