Virus and worm attacks are increasingly infecting mobile phones, but experts say that what we have seen thus far is only the beginning. This morning two new Trojan horse programs appeared, threatening to render Symbian-based mobile phones useless. A story by IDG News Service correspondent John Blau, reported that the programs, Gavno.a and Gavno.b, masquerade as patch files designed to trick users into downloading them. They both affect phones, such as Nokia’s 6600 and 7610 models, using Symbian’s OS version 7 with the Series 60 graphical user interface, Blau wrote in the story. Not affected are Symbian-based phones such as the P900 and P910 from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and the A925 and 1000 from Motorola equipped with the graphical user interface from UIQ Technology, the story said. Also unaffected are Nokia’s 3650 and Siemens’ SX1, running Symbian OS version 6.x together with the Series 60 interface. Meanwhile, The New York Times this morning ran a profile of mobile virus writer Marcos Velasco, who created the Velasco worm, a.k.a. Lasco.A, Symbos_Vlasco.A or the Lasco virus. That story stated that “industry experts are careful to say that the age of the cellphone virus is not yet upon us.” Furthermore, the story quotes Gartner analyst John Pescatore as saying the firm has told clients that 2005 is the year they should being taking steps to protect against mobile phone worms. The ramifications of mobile phone viruses include data theft, the generation of expensive phone calls and, as is the case with the Gavno worms, crippling the handsets. Technology Industry