Throwback Thursday: Cabirn Fever

This Throwback Thursday, we turn the clock back to 2004, when the first worm to spread from mobile phone to mobile phone appeared.

Since it first appeared almost exactly 11 years ago, mobile malware has broadly followed the same evolutionary path as PC malware — but at a much faster rate.

The first piece of malware to spread from phone to phone was a long time coming, and when SymbOS/Cabir did finally arrive, in June 2004, the fact that it used a specific user-interface component meant that it was restricted to

Symbian Series 60

phones. Nevertheless, this piece of malware heralded the beginning of the age of mobile malware: by 2010, an increase in monetized malware and malware targeting privacy was observable on mobile platforms, and in 2015, we have full-scale mobile cybercriminality (indeed, you can read Luis Corrons’ VB2014 paper on Exposing Android White Collar criminals

here

, and at VB2015, Cathal McDaid and Denis Maslennikov will present a

paper

on mobile banking fraud via SMS.)

In August 2004, Peter Ferrie and Péter Ször brought us a full analysis of Cabir — which brought with it some new challenges for natural infection testing. Their analysis can be read

here

in HTML-format, or downloaded

here

as a PDF (no registration or subscription required).

Posted on 09 July 2015 by

Helen Martin