Mobile Ad-hoc Viruses

I've just been down presenting a paper in Wollongong (I'll post the audio recording and slides of my talk shortly) when whaddaya know, I bump into a new kind of virus. I was standing waiting for my train at Central Station in Sydney and I glance at my phone only to notice a bluetooth query. "Incoming bluetooth message, do you wish to accept?". Bluetoothing is a bit juvenile at times, but hey, I'm game for a bit of experimentation, so I said yes. Next thing, it asks me if I want to Install an application - and then another bluetooth request came through just like the previous one. The installing application dialog set off the warning bells, but I was locked into a loop of new requests for incoming bluetooth connections. In effect it's a denial of service attack on using your phone until a) you get out of range of the sender or b) you manage to turn off your bluetooth advertising somehow.

There was a guy sitting on the bench near me who appeared to be taking the battery out of his phone. Nobody else around had a phone out, but it could have been in a pocket. The guy in the bench moved off to a different car and the requests stopped coming to the phone.

So anyway, I now have a "MYTITI.SIS" file sitting in my inbox which gives me the warning about an attempt to install if I select it. I'm presuming that it's a virus. I suppose it might also be porno ad if I get creative about interpreting filenames. Google doesn't seem to know anything about it.

A friend located the article Virus attacks mobiles via Bluetooth which explains the creation of just such a virus. What I've managed to contract could be a variation of it.

There's some interesting usability implications to how these viruses move around. So far it seems the warning screens are fairly clear, but some morning when you're drunk on the train home you might just be bored enough or uncoordinated enough to navigate your way into a virus. I'm also wondering how the movement patterns of these things will differ from their cousins with less-mobile hosts.

Cheers to Tim for the info