'Metal Gear' Symbian OS Trojan Disables Anti-Virus

Omniscientist writes "Just when you thought your Series 60 smartphones were safe, a trojan has surfaced with a two-pronged attack that also in turn disables any anti-virus protection available. Infosyncworld has news about a trojan masquerading itself as a port for the Metal Gear game that disables all anti-virus software on the phone and other necessary utilities like file managers. Also, it affects other phones nearby it via Bluetooth. This trojan has been dubbed 'Metal Gear.a,' quite aptly."

Re:We're surprised?

[koniosis]

You're right, why carry around a compact device that can take pictures, play games, sync with my calender and e-mails and allow me to make calls, connect to the internet and now stream videos when I can carry around a Gameboy, a phone, a pda and a camera and a laptop!!

Personally, if I were a virus writer...

[mark-t]

The most perfect crime isn't just one where you're not actually caught, it's one where nobody ever notices that the crime was committed in the first place. If you shut down the antivirus software, you leave a potentially very visible avenue that leads directly to the cause.

That's why if I were to actually go about writing a virus, it would not actually disable any existing antivirus software at all, but would make suitable patches to the most common ones so that my virus would simply not be detected by it, thereby convincing most people into naively believing that their antivirus software is running as expected during what is actually the virus's dormancy period.

Why nobody else has tried this is beyond me.

Does the fact that I would even think of something like this make me a bad person?