Text messages may freeze Nokia phones - News

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Text messages may freeze Nokia phones

October 13, 2000
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/Text-messages-may-freeze-Nokia-phones-/0,139023165,120105607,00.htm

A Norwegian company claims coding in text messages could freeze top-selling cell phones. Are viruses far behind?

A Norwegian mobile Internet firm said Wednesday that some Nokia mobile phones may freeze temporarily if certain text messages are sent to them.

The claim is the latest indication that mobile devices may be able to be manipulated by viruses and malicious code in the same way as PCs. In May millions of PCs globally were bit by the "Love Bug" virus.

Finnish Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, said it had not yet seen any evidence of the claims made by Norwegian mobile Internet software developer Web2Wap AS, but added that it was looking into them.

"The key point for the general public to know is this is just a claim," Nokia Mobile Phones spokesman Tapio Hedman told Reuters. "Nothing has been affecting users. There are no malfunctions on our phones."

"We'll look into it and if upgrades to the phones are needed we'll do them."

Coding to blame
Web2Wap Managing Director Bjorn Viksund in Norway told Reuters by phone that during testing of its mobile Internet products the company's technicians had discovered that certain text messages coded in a specific way and sent to some Nokia phones caused them to freeze temporarily.

"By accident during testing we found that under some circumstances Nokia phones freeze," said Viksund. He said this was when SMS (Short Message Services) messages were sent.

But he added that to start up the phone again one had to take off the battery from the handset and re-connect it.

Viksund also said the company did not expect anyone to have abused this. "Sending this thing is not easy," he said.

Nokia questions claims
SMS is the most widely used mobile messaging technology on the market, with billions of messages sent between users around Europe each month.

Web2Wap did not want to comment on what Nokia phones they had tested but said it had tested mobile Internet software, and currently Nokia's only phone with limited Internet access on the market was the Nokia 7110.

"These viruses and malfunctions are at the moment only theories and we don't know if they can be proven, but as a standard procedure we always look into these kind of issues to see if there's any reality to such rumors," Nokia's Hedman said.

Claims about mobile viruses that have circulated in the past have not proven to hold water, he added.

But Finnish security software group F-Secure said mobile viruses had popped up in the past, such as the VBS/Timofonica worm in June which was activated by sending SMS short messages to random mobile phones.

"The information we have about this Nokia story is very sketchy," said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research at F-Secure "It may be similar to the June virus."