Enterprise applications Toolkit

Patch available for first Palm virus

Richard Barry ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 22 Sep 2000 10:03 BST

The Palm is under attack from its first virus according to data security specialist F-Secure Friday. The Phage virus is capable of disabling programs on the Palm forcing them to be deleted.

F-Secure has released a patch protecting Palm users from the virus.

Reports of the virus arrived at F-Secure's laboratories in Finland Friday morning and although the company says the risk of infection is relatively low, it issued a warning advising Palm users to be vigilant.

"This virus has no means of replicating itself" says Paul Brettle, product consultant at F-Secure, "which means the risk of infection is pretty low." But while Palm users breath a sigh of relief, Brettle warns that more virulent strains are bound to follow. "Someone has obviously spent a long time working on this virus and now knows and understands the Palm environment well enough to write malicious code. More Palm viruses are likely."

Phage infects add-in applications downloaded onto Palm machines either via connection to a PC or via disc. Files are corrupted causing them to lock up. Users struck by Phage will be greeted by a dark grey box on their screens followed by application shut down.

F-Secure is advising users to delete any file which is found with the virus using the Palm device's 'application delete' function. Recovery from this threat requires a hard-reset followed by synchronisation of the PDA device with the user's PC.

If you think your Palm has been infected by Phage click this link for more information, and to get F-Secure's free Anti Virus for Palm, which will remove the virus.

Click here to get F-Secure Anti Virus for Palm

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