The first ever PocketPC virus was discovered over the weekend – but it’s a proof of concept project and carries no payload. Given how long devices running Microsoft’s PocketPC operating system have been available, it’s surprising that we’ve been lucky up until now.
The virus, Duts, was written by one of the 29A virus group – a group who write viruses as an exercise to analyse dangers and provide information for anti-virus companies. The same group produced the Cabir Symbian virus last month.
Duts is safe even if it gets out in to the wild as it asks for permission before infecting other files, and only affects a limited number of file types. However, it may not be too difficult for someone to reverse engineer the code and produce a malicious variant.
Viruses and trojan horses are now spreading to other platforms, meaning that PDA and phone users, nit just PC owners will have to take anti-virus measures very seriously indeed.