Spanish police pinch cell phone hacker

He created and distributed malware that infected 115,000 phones

Spanish police have arrested a 28-year-old man and charged him with creating and distributing malware that infected an estimated 115,000 cell phones, the French AFP news service reported yesterday 24th June.

The unidentified defendant, who was arrested in Valencia after a seven-month investigation, allegedly created more than 20 variants of the Cabir and Commwarrior worms, which target mobile phones running the Symbian operating system and infect nearby devices via Bluetooth.

According to Sophos Plc., the man embedded his fiance's name -- Leslie -- in the worms' source code. Rival security company F-Secure, Corp. had previously pegged Cabir's creator as a member of the "29a" hacker crew, and said his handle was "ValleZ." Commwarrior's author, however, was thought to be a Russian who went by the nickname "Eldod0r."

Ron O'Brien, a senior security analyst at Sophos, classified the worm as "proof-of-concept, if you will. They're out to prove that cell phones are not secure, that Bluetooth isn't secure." Neither does more than propagate. "They're malicious only in the eye of the beholder," said O'Brien.

Commwarrior spreads via MMS (multimedia messaging service) by sending a message to other devices within Bluetooth range. If the recipient accepts the incoming message -- which poses as a new game, ring tone, driver, or even Symbian update -- his or her phone is infected.

Although most security vendors have predicted an increase in mobile malware, those forecasts have not panned out. "There isn't a common operating system," said O'Brien in explaining the low threat level posed by cell phone viruses and worms. "Phones are not like PCs in that they don't have a universal operating system. That makes [mobile] worms a much harder sell to hackers."

Doctors: Video Games Not an Addiction (for now)

Physicians have been debating whether video game addiction can be lumped together with other addictions such as drugs, smoking and alcoholism. The AMA's delegates are to vote on the matter later this week but the committee that made the proposal has already backed away from the idea.


As previously reported, the American Medical Association (AMA) had been looking into whether or not video games can actually be considered an addiction. However, according to a Reuters report over the weekend, doctors have now backed away from their proposal to classify video game addiction with real substance problems such as alcoholism.

At the AMA's annual meeting, addiction experts said that video game addiction affects about ten percent of players but that more study is needed before the problem could be classified as an actual mental illness.

"There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn't get to have the word addiction attached to it," said Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

"It's not necessarily a cause-and-effect type issue. There may be certain kids who have a compulsive component to what they are doing," Dr. Louis Kraus of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and a psychiatrist at Rush University Medical Center told Reuters.

Still Dr. Kraus is concerned about the possible social implications of too much video game playing. "The more time kids spend on video games, the less time they will have socializing, the less time they will have with their families, the less time they will have exercising," he said. "They can make up academic deficits, but they can't make up the social ones."

Some physicians remain convinced, however, that video game addiction and other serious addictions are very similar. "Working with this problem is no different than working with alcoholic patients. The same denial, the same rationalization, the same inability to give it up," commented Dr. Thomas Allen of the Osler Medical Center in Towson, Maryland.

While the debate rages, the AMA committee will consider the testimony and make its final recommendation to the AMA's 555 voting delegates, who are scheduled to vote later this week.

That said, the committee that made the proposal immediately backed away from its position, and instead passed the torch to the American Psychiatric Association should they wish to revise their next diagnostic manual in 2012.

by James Brightman

Im a social NERD woooooooo!!

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Social Nerd - 95% You're interested in things such as politics, psychology, child care, and peace. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a hippie, but some of you may be tree-huggers. You're the type of people who are interested in bettering the world. You're possible the least nerdy of them all; unless you participate in other activies that paled your nerdiness compared to your involvement in social activities. Whatever the case, we could still use more of you around. ^_^
Gamer/Computer Nerd	78%
Drama Nerd	61%
Literature Nerd	53%
Artistic Nerd	40%
Science/Math Nerd	23%
Anime Nerd	12%
Musician	2%
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace