I Phone 5 virus alert

I don't know squat about technical stuff but here is what happened:

I just have a little flip phone that I can call on and text. It's a $15 AT&T Go Phone.

I got a text from a customer and it looked completely normal when it came it. I opened it and read it and it still looked normal.

It wasn't until I looked at my text in box that I saw there was a problem. Every text in my in box had a bunch of weird numbers and letters in it. It was obvious.

Being not a techy I tried to open one of the messages in the in box and my phone actually zapped. It was an electrical zap and some strange messages came up. I thought it was my phone as it is pretty new.

Went to AT&T and she tried to open it and the same thing happened. ZAAP! She grabbed my phone and took off with it.
A virus had come into my phone thru a text message. She said they were aware of the problem on the I Phone 5 and that if you opened it the phone was completely "incapacitated." I think it just burns up your phone.

I deleted everything and now my phone is working fine. I can call and text again. I called the people who had sent the text and they are like me and know nothing about techy stuff. She has a Galaxy 3 and she said they had been having trouble receiving messages on their phone.

Hopefully someone who is a techy can explain this. It was obvious that AT&T was very concerned. She went into that mode where they are careful about every work they say.