Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson smartphones are among those running the two Symbian operating systems vulnerable to attack according to NetQin.

By Mathew J. Schwartz,  InformationWeek
July 6, 2010
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225702440

New viruses targeting Symbian smartphones have surfaced, according to NetQin, which develops security software for mobile devices.

Two Symbian operating systems are vulnerable: S60 platform 3rd Edition, aka Symbian OS 9.1, as well as S60 5th edition, aka Symbian OS 9.4. The operating systems run a number of smartphones from such manufacturers as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

Dubbed ShadowSrv.A, FC.Downsis.A, BIT.N and MapPlug.A, the viruses come hidden in games designed for Symbian smartphones. Once the games are run, the virus executes, giving the virus writer full control over the devices, said NetQin. In other words, the smartphone becomes part of a botnet, and can be used to launch further attacks on other devices.

In addition, according to NetQin, “these viruses will either send messages to all the contacts of the address book directly, or send messages to … random phone numbers by connecting to the server.” The messages sent by the virus contain URLs, purportedly to such content as World Cup video on demand or popular television shows, but which really link to websites hosting the virus. To cover its tracks, the virus deletes any messages it sends from a user’s outbox and SMS log.

NetQin estimates that 100,000 mobile phones worldwide are vulnerable to the virus.

Smartphones being infected by viruses isn’t a new threat, and malware aimed at smartphones continues to mature. For example, in late 2009, researchers, discovered the iKee botnet, which targeted jailbroken iPhones, backed by command-and-control functionality to press these iPhones into the service of a botnet.

Even so, stumbling into a virus by downloading a mobile application is a relatively new threat. “The explosion of mobile applications has made smartphones an enticing target for virus authors,” said Lin Yu, CEO of NetQin, in a statement.

Driven by financial incentives, “many security threats that were once only spread on PCs, such as botnets, are now moving to mobile devices,” he said.

These financial incentives may include making phones spend money on services controlled by attackers. For example, last month, Donato Ferrante at Sophos wrote a blog dissecting a different piece of Symbian malware, Troj/SymbSms-A, which spreads via an SIS archive file. Its purpose appears to be to send messages to a premium-rate Russian phone number until the infected smartphone runs out of credit.

Twitter via SMS (text) messaging is now available to customers of O2 in Ireland, although sending them incurs a cost of 11c. Up to 500 incoming tweets per month are free however.

To start, have Twitter verify your mobile phone at http://www.twitter.com/devices. Then go to O2 at http://short.ie/a65hji to get all the details on terms and conditions.

If you’re a smartphone user, you may not be overwhelmed by the offering, as you likely already have a twitter client. But if you’re a regular mobile user, or you’re roaming, it’s still good to have this option. Also the incoming messages won’t eat into your anaemic Irish data plan

Thankfully, you can select who you wish to receive tweets from and at what times during the day. Nothing worse than spam on your mobile.

There are a series of commands that you can use on your mobile phone to control Twitter and you can find them on the Twitter Help Page.

There are lots of local businesses using Nortel PBX systems around here. They better wise up – Happy Thanksgiving!

Nortel Networks – Top wireless turkeys of 2009 – FierceWireless.

If you are a startup company in the Athlone area then you may be interested in visiting the Radisson Hotel, Athlone, On Saturday, November 14th, 2009, between 11am and 2pm.

FK Development, part of the FK Group, with offices in Moate, Co. Westmeath, will be presenting details of the several properties they have in their portfolio, located around Athlone and also Mullingar.

Part of the attraction is the ability to occupy these premises for a rent-free period, though the press release is not more specific. The other part of note is they will offer practical advice as to how to obtain public funding and assistance for your business, although to my mind a visit to your library will give you much the same information.

But hey, it’s a chance to network, which for any startup is no bad thing, so I’ll probably go.

I had an example here but I removed it.

If anyone is configuring their Linksys Sipura phone or ATAs here are the tone settings which are equivalent to those in use in Ireland on eircom digital exchanges:

These are the major tones used in Ireland, the other supplemental tones generated by the router / VoIP phone can be left in their US standard settings, as they are either not encountered on the Irish network or, are identical to the US standards. Many of the confirmation tones etc are usually voice prompts/messages on an eircom line.

Call Progress Tones for Republic of Ireland:

Dial Tone: 425@-10; 10(*/0/1)

Outside Dial Tone/Second Dial Tone: 400@-10; 10(*/0/1)

or, alternatively, for a higher pitch tone: 440@-10; 10(*/0/1)

Busy Tone: 425@-10; 10(0.5/0.5/1)

Reorder Tone: 425@-10; 10(.25/.25/1)

Ring Back Tone: 400@-19,450@-19;*(.4/.2/1+2,.4/.2/1+2,2/0/0)

MWI Dial Tone: 425@-19;2(.1/.1/1);28(*/0/1)

You can find these settings in the regional preference pane – you may need to click advanced and administrator log in.

If you live in a country where Twitter does not automatically deliver your directs and mentions via SMS you may still have an opportunity to get them delivered if you have a Nokia S60 phone.

The magic is done by Synble, a piece of software that runs in the background on your mobile device. The SMS forwarding is just one feature of Synble, it can also text you when there is an update to an RSS feed which I find useful for sports scores.

As ever it’s free

Bull Bear Market Cartoon

CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO — Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry.

VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER — What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves..

FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW– The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use.

http://youaremyextasy.blogspot.com/2009/01/recession-humour.html

Go on admit it, you’re po’d that Google Voice (GV) is available to people living in the United States only. It may be for friends or business interests, whatever the reason the ability to call U.S. telephones (both fixed and mobile) for absolutely zip, zero, nada appeals to you. Conversely, U.S. residents can also contact you without incurring international rates.

Having your own U.S. phone number gives you a “presence” in that part of the world and to those who might call that number, you are for all intents and purposes, answering as if in the U.S.! And to make it even sweeter you get to select exactly where in the U.S. your number is located. New York, San Francisco or Biloxi, Mississippi , it’s up to you. Then when you dial using GV, the Caller ID displayed to the recipient shows the number and geographic region you selected. If only you were in the U.S. to take advantage of it .

But wait! for four easy payments of $26.99 + shipping…. ok, ok I’m kidding… I couldn’t help it.  Here’s how you do it for free…

If you know a little about SIP and VOIP continue reading, otherwise grab your nearest geek and ask that person to read this post!

The very first hurdle you have to clear is to request a GV account. Do that by going to the GV invitation page and use your gmail account where requested. In a few days you should receive an email back inviting you to Google voice service. “Hold on!”,  you say, “don’t GV know I’m not in the U.S.? Why bother?”  They don’t check at request time, that’s why, and it’s not going to know as I’ll explain.

Fast forward a few days and great, you have an invite, but in your haste you clicked the link they gave you but got a message saying Google Voice is only for U.S. residents currently. You got that message because the geo-location of your I.P. was recognized as non-U.S. so the next thing you’ll need to do is login to a proxy within the U.S. before you can proceed any further. You probably already know some working proxies in the U.S. and if you do please mention them in the comments below for the benefit of us all. If you don’t you might need to use a commercial one for a while which costs very little in any case. If you read my post about Pandora on my blog you’ll find the one I used mentioned there.

On to the next gotcha. Before you try to use your GV invite check before you click the invitation link that you really are on a proxy. Use a service such as WhatIsMyIP to verify the location is reported as within the U.S. And another big one – clear your browser of cookies, very important! If Google finds it’s own cookie(s) in your cache reporting a locale other than the U.S. it will go by those and not the proxy location. So just make sure your cookie cache is cleared.

Now if you’ve done all that, go ahead, click the invite and GV will guide you through the setup of your number, your voice mail settings and all the other features (including free send/receive texting!). It’s all well-documented at the GV site which will become visible to you at this point.

Hold your questions for a moment now, I’ll deal with them shortly, just stick to the steps in this guide and it’ll become clearer to you as we progress.

If you’ve been following along in a set by step manner, you’ll find another big Gotcha at this point. GV requires a U.S. number for forwarding purposes and for validation. Curses! Why didn’t I tell you, this is a chicken and egg situation and a waste of time! Well it’s not.

Now there may be lots of argument about big government going on in the U.S. at the moment, but for purpose of this exercise we love them and more particularly the Federal Communications Commission or FCC. Because of a quirky FCC requirement regarding rural phone line availability companies such as IP Kall exist. Basically IP Kall get a subsidy every time one of the phone numbers they control connects a call. And it didn’t take them long to figure out that if you used SIP for the call termination, more and more people could use their service and they would get correspondingly large subsidies. People who have a U.S. landline have a billing item for a “universal access fee” and we’re taking advantage of that program’s largess here! But that’s another story.

Go ahead and sign up for IP Kall (or similar, if you find others please leave them in the comments) and make sure it’s working. By working I mean that you can dial the number it assigned you and it rings back to your PC or ATA. Now you have a U.S. number that’s located in Washington state on the west coast, which in and of itself is quite useful, but not as useful as a GV number.

Go back to your GV setup and put the IP Kall number as your forwarding number. Google will now dial that number which will then ring at whatever device/softphone is logged into your SIP account. Google will ask you to key in a confirmation code and then you’re good to go! Be careful that you have the correct DTMF settings too, you might have to play with that a little.

If you so wish you can then go the GV dashboard and add a free Gizmo account as a forwarding number which is also very useful as it can forwand an incoming call to SIP, Skype or GTalk.

Once you have all the setup done you can dispense with the proxy, in other words, GV does not check location during usage, only at signup time. In addition, the IP Kall number will expire after 30 days of inactivity, but with GV you can dial it for free so there’s no excuse for that.

How you use it after this is up to you, I like to use it via the SIP client on my Nokia E71 as well as  my Linksys PAP2 ATA.

In summary:

• Obtain GV Invite
• Sign up for Gizmo5
• Sign up for IP Kall
• Register GV using a US proxy
• Enjoy!

Remember Google Voice is still a Beta product and subject to change. All comments welcome.

What’s interesting about this post as you read it is that in fact I am speaking it using a service from a website called dial2do.com. It transcribes every word I speak to generate this posting into Word Press.

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