Moby Malware Arrest

AFP reports that the alleged creator of the Moby virus was arrested in Valencia on Saturday by Spanish detectives, following a seven-month investigation.

The man is accused of creating and spreading over 20 different variants of the Cabir and Commwarrior worms to 115,000 phones running the Symbian operating system.

It isn't as destructive as some other mobile malware efforts, but the social networking aspects of the virus appear to have been well architected. According to AFP:

"The virus... was disguised as messages claiming to contain erotic images, sports information or virus protection software."

BlueTooth users needed to select "yes" when the virus-initiated dialog boxes appeared in order to be affected by the virus. It appears 115,000 users were convinced enough by the promise of antivirus updates, erotic messages and sports scores to do just that.

Social networking trumps common sense yet again. The 28-year-old creator of this virus will no doubt have plenty of time to reflect on his sociology skills - in jail.

Authentium's v5.0 mobile malware scanning engine protects against Moby and similar mobile threats.