USA gets taste of first Mobile Virus with Cabir

USA gets taste of first Mobile Virus with Cabir

World’s first mobile virus in the wild was spotted some months back in the Asian country of Philippines. It took eight months for the dreaded virtual disease to reach the United States. The virus named Cabir has now been reported in around 12 countries and could start the era of the next generation of cyber worms, which would spread on mobiles and Personal Digital Assistants.

With more than 1.5 Billion mobile users in the world, this is a big potential target market for both the virus creators and the Anti-Virus application developers. However little relief can be derived from the fact that this first virus to reach America has little damaging effect on the mobile phones. Security Application developers F-Secure said that the virus cause little damage other than draining the batteries of the mobiles fast.

Cabir was spotted in USA in a technology gadgets store in Santa Monica, California. Experts believe that it would take time before such viruses became common in the wild and would be relatively hard to spread around when compared to PC viruses. The advantage being there is no monopoly of a single operating system in mobiles, which exists with Microsoft Windows on the PC Platform.

In addition, many Anti-Virus applications for mobiles are already out in the market. The whole point is that the users have to take care of their mobiles as they take care of their computers. With Bluetooth and wireless technology getting popular, catching a cyber cold could be bad for your mobile devices.