Beware Of Installing Hacked Programs On Your Pocket PCs

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=327994&amp;seqNum=1">http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=327994&amp;seqNum=1</a><br /><br /><i>"The summer of 2003 brought a new wave of a deadly, mosquito-borne viruses. This summer, a new Mosquito-borne infection arrived. But it didn't attack humans. Rather, it infected cellular phones."</i><br /><br />The article gets into a lot of technical details, but it seems the basic premise is, some users downloaded a hacked version of a game called Mosquito that turned out to be malware. It was covertly sending SMS messages to premium SMS numbers costing the user several dollars per message. I suspect this is only the beginning. :?

[Jonathan1]

Moral of the story kids? What goes around comes around. I’m not suggesting that the perpetrator of this Trojan is blameless nor am I suggesting that the downloader is also blameless. IMHO I’d say 60/40. You guys can figure out who is 60 and who is 40 ;)

[ctitanic]

well, It's time to pay of for warez :) ;)

[DinarSoft]

well, It's time to pay of for warez :) ;)
very well said :) ;)

[dean_shan]

I think the title of this thread should be called 'Beware Of Installing Hacked Programs On You Phone' as this game is for a phone.

[surur]

As I have mentioned earlier, this is very worrying, because it adds a financial incentive to hacking your pocketpcphone. It seems its even easier to make money of a phone (via sms and premium lines) than from a pc, so I expect more and more hacker attention to be targeted at the platform, following the money.

I frequent XDA developers.com regularly, and have installed many HACKS to my phone. These improve the bluetooth, make the keys work better and a variety of other improvements. These are all freeware, but when some-one offers a hack that improves functionality, how do I know their reputation and inf they are trustworthy? How do I know they are not actually trying to CRACK my ppcphone?

As Ive said, this is very worrying, especially to enthusiast sites. We all know microsoft does a very poor job of finishing their OS, and if it was not for 3rd party developers they would never be usable.

On this occasion it was from a pirated game. On the next it could be a nifty freeware today screen plug-in that shows your GPRS usage. I dont think complacency is warranted.

[jizmo]

The very reason why I like my cell phones plain and dumb. :roll:

/jizmo

[AhuhX]

I have to say a big "Ha! Ha!" to anyone that got done by this. I was pretty appalled by the recent piracy of Doom 3. It's totally rediculous that some people are so pathetically money grubbing and dishonest that they just can't seem to find the decency in themselves to compensate somebody for 3 years of effort they put into something.

It's a pity nobody could do something similar for that game...

[ctitanic]

I have to say a big "Ha! Ha!" to anyone that got done by this. I was pretty appalled by the recent piracy of Doom 3. It's totally rediculous that some people are so pathetically money grubbing and dishonest that they just can't seem to find the decency in themselves to compensate somebody for 3 years of effort they put into something.

It's a pity nobody could do something similar for that game...

Completly agree with you.

It seems to me that developers have found a way to fight against warez ;)

[bjornkeizers]

I have to say a big "Ha! Ha!" to anyone that got done by this. I was pretty appalled by the recent piracy of Doom 3. It's totally rediculous that some people are so pathetically money grubbing and dishonest that they just can't seem to find the decency in themselves to compensate somebody for 3 years of effort they put into something.

It's a pity nobody could do something similar for that game...

Whoa, whoa there - there's piracy and piracy. The US version of Doom 3 was released on the third, but the european release isn't until this friday. So, what would you do: you're a european gamer, you preordered the game, but you have to wait a week and a half to get it. A lot of the people who are downloading it right now have preordered it - I confirmed my preorder last week, but I still tried to download it, because I don't like to wait when it's totally unnecessary (like in this case)

I agree that the people who are downloading & sharing it to steal it should be dealt with harshly. In this case, there are tens of thousands of people who won't buy the game because they don't have to. It's piracy on a Big, Big Scale

Now - and I know you'll flame me for this - piracy on a small scale like pirating the odd Java game for a phone isn't really that big a deal. Do you know how lucrative that business is? Very! Will they miss the sales of a handful of games? I doubt it. And it's not as if there are tens of thousands of people sharing them, and not everyone has the ability to transfer games to their phone. Most don't even know that they could do this.

So, to recap:

Pirating Doom 3 to steal it: Bad! Draw and quarter the true thieves
Downloading Doom 3 because we have to wait a week and a half: I can forgive that as long as you won't distribute it to all your friends or share it.
Pirating a Java phone game: *shrugs*

[sponge]

Yea, let's show those pirates by encouraging something else even more illegal! Gotta love the huge leap in logic.

[Darren Behan]

I personally know the anticapation of waiting for the next big thing; be it a game, hardware or whatever and sometimes it can feel agonizing to be sure. Still, I have to question the notion that you are entitled to 'temporarily' steal it just because you have to wait a week for it to be released locally. I mean, at the end of the day what are we really talking about here...a game for god's sake. While it may be a very cool game (who knows?) does it really cause you so much suffering not to have it that you believe your actions justified? No offense intended but that seems kind of sad to me.

As for the Mosquito thing, you get what you pay for. I don't claim to be the pinnacle of software morality but no one can cry foul if they get screwed by hacked software.

db

[bjornkeizers]

While it may be a very cool game (who knows?) does it really cause you so much suffering not to have it that you believe your actions justified? No offense intended but that seems kind of sad to me.

You're obviously not a gamer, so I'll forgive you your ignorance ;-) I haven't been waiting just a single week: I've been waiting for months. And in the case of Half Life 2, we've been waiting for more then a year. When you've been waiting for that long, the thought of waiting another week causes sheer agony. You bet your ass I'll be camping out front of my gamestore come friday (after being on the phone with them all thursday) just so I can pick it up. A nice thermos of Earl Grey and some biscuits, and we'll make a nice little camping trip out of it.

[danmanmayer]

what is a premium sms number. I have never heard of such a thing. also did the virus maker own any of these numbers hence making a evil yet clever way to make money? I dont get what could be premium about sending a message.

[Ed Hansberry]

what is a premium sms number. I have never heard of such a thing. also did the virus maker own any of these numbers hence making a evil yet clever way to make money? I dont get what could be premium about sending a message.

http://www.dafu.de/redir/psms-en.html

[sponge]

If he wants a game, he wants it. They're lucky it's only a week in this case - it took Worms 3D 9 months at least to get to the States. This isn't an issue of whether it's significant or "really matters" because in the end, what DOES really matter? If avoiding needless waiting is sad, then I must be damn depressed.

[AhuhX]

Let's clear one thing up. Pirating a game isn't stealing- legally it's copyright infringement. Something totally different.

bjornkeizers I feel your pain in regard to late releases, or total non-releases... :)

I feel sometimes these big companies bring these things on themselves. The music industry is a perfect example. The've shafted consumers for years and then they wonder why illegal downloads took off so rapidly.

I am in Oz, so we usually get things last or not at all, but in the case of D3 we got it first! Funnily enough, I wasn't that in much a rush to play it. PC FPS'ers have bored me senseless every time I've tried one since the orignal Doom. I can definatley say for all it's prettty graphics, D3 is no Metroid. I'm hanging for HL2 to come out because I never played the orginal and hoping it's more gameplay than graphics as is the case with D3.

Anyway, your rationalisation for doing the illegal download; no comment. I was more peeved with people who were just doing it without a thought, and people that were using the argument that they were just going to "try before they buy". I mean, give me a break! Talk about your gutless rationalisations. I wish they'd just have the b*lls to say "Yeah I'm a pirate", but then alot of people don't ever want to admit their actually doing something wrong.