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Photos: Inside the antivirus control centre

silicon.com gets to the bottom of mobile phone virus claims, inside F-Secure's Helsinki HQ
By Will Sturgeon, Contributor
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1 of 6 Will Sturgeon/ZDNET

silicon.com gets to the bottom of mobile phone virus claims, inside F-Secure's Helsinki HQ

Access all areas: F-Secure's headquarters is situated in the dockyard district of Finnish capital Helsinki. silicon.com visited to get the lowdown on how one player in the often secretive antivirus industry operates.

All photos: Will Sturgeon

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2 of 6 Will Sturgeon/ZDNET

Putting security on the map: Inside the operation centre there are constantly updating screens monitoring security outbreaks as they occur, plotting metrics such as number of interceptions against real time geographical locations to measure the spread. In a world where threats typically spread from east to west and follow the sun this throws up clear patterns.

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3 of 6 Will Sturgeon/ZDNET
What does it all mean? Mikko Hypponen, CTO at F-Secure, talks through the data and describes the arms race which is going on between the antivirus industry and the virus writers who are increasingly involved in wider, offline organised crime.

The technology on display within the operation centre is vital for the fight against the ever more sophisticated systems being used by the criminals.

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4 of 6 Will Sturgeon/ZDNET
Test site: Following recent headlines about the issue of mobile phone viruses, and strong disagreement with some of F-Secure's claims from other industry experts, Hypponen introduces us to the steel vault in which the company tests actual mobile phone viruses.

"Nobody is allowed to take a phone in here," he explains, as the company's techies will be deliberately infecting Nokia handsets while they are in the vault and understandably don't want those infections to leave the strictly controlled laboratory conditions. A few headlines about 'hype' is one thing; starting an outbreak is the kind of PR they could certainly do without.

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The writing's on the wall: The door says it all.

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6 of 6 Will Sturgeon/ZDNET
What does this button do? Inside the vault, Jarno Niemelä, senior antivirus researcher, launches versions of Cabir on Nokia handsets, in the hope that other people won't make the same mistake by understanding these rarely seen viruses more closely and observing them spread.

As one phone becomes infected via bluetooth, the others chirp into action, one-by-one, announcing that they too have become infected in a viral 'domino effect'.

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