I'm so Blue

Sorry about the break in blogging. Blame it on travel, on some surgery, or on the fact that we get a blue moon tomorrow night. Whatever it was, I'm back.

Good thing, too, because I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Mikko Hypponen, who's in charge of the anti-virus team at F-Secure. I'll probably have several posts based on the conversation, but the issue that has me most interested this morning is the first Bluetooth virus, a wonderful little beast that can infect your cell phone just because you walked within Bluetooth distance of an infected phone.

This first virus, known as Cabir, isn't terribly harmful in and of itself, but Mikko calls it a solid "proof of concept" for other, more damaging, programs. There are already programs out to disinfect your cell phone, and I'm sure the cell-phone anti-virus packages are on their way, but until you have one there are two choices; turn Bluetooth off when you're not actively using it, or start skulking around the perimeter of rooms, suspiciously eyeing each person's cell phone and wondering when the next infection will strike. Call me silly, but the "off" parameter seems the better option for the short run.