An article about a virus that could infect Apple iPod media players misidentified the creator of the virus. Kaspersky Lab, a security company, was the first to identify and verify the malicious program, but the virus' creator is a third party who has yet to be identified publicly.

Tired of updating the anti-virus software on your computer? Wait until you have to install it on your iPod, too.

Researchers at security company Kaspersky Lab have created the first virus designed to infect Apple's portable media player. But don't rush out to buy digital armor for your beloved music player just yet: The company said the software program, Podloso, "does not present a real threat; it simply demonstrates that it is theoretically possible to create malicious programs for such devices."

"When you have a product as popular as the iPod ... it's a natural target for researchers and other hackers looking for vulnerabilities to exploit," said Nick Selby, an analyst at The 451 Group in Boston.

In the security software world, new "proof-of-concept" exploits like Podloso are a daily occurrence as researchers search for new ways that hackers might try to compromise systems.

Sometimes, this type of early research foreshadows future threats.


Three years ago, Kaspersky, based in Moscow with U.S. headquarters in Woburn, Mass., and Finnish security company F-Secure, tested the first computer worm that affected mobile phones, spread by Bluetooth signal. Now, several hundred phone viruses exist, some of them malicious.

"We've seen it happen over and over in the malware world. Someone will do a test, creating a simple thing that does no real damage. Once hackers see that the approach works, they continue to tweak it and use it for malicious intent," said Dee Liebenstein, director of product management at SecureWave, a Luxembourg vendor of security software that helps companies control when and how portable devices connect to corporate computers.

Podloso's approach is unlikely to evolve into a real threat anytime soon. The virus only affects iPods running Linux; a fraction of iPods do so. What's more, the virus does not copy itself from iPod to iPod; users have to install the virus for it to infect the iPod's files. Malicious programs would be more dangerous if in addition to infecting iPod files (as Podloso does), they spread from the devices to PCs (which Podloso does not).

"There's often a long way to go from proof of concept to in-the-wild exploit," Selby said.

In the fall, Apple, which did not return requests for comment, acknowledged that a small number of video iPods carried a Windows virus, affecting computers the iPods were plugged into, but not the devices themselves.

As more people use "smart" devices like mobile phones, iPods and flash-memory devices, these kinds of security threats might multiply and become more serious.

"Today, there's the risk of carrying a known Windows virus on a storage device and infecting a computer," Liebenstein said. "Tomorrow, as we look to the devices becoming more powerful and having an operating system, they'll become targets of their own."
