Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The ever increasing threat of mobile viruses
According to a report from Kaspersky Lab the risk is especially high for Windows CE (as used in MS Smartphone, Phone Edition and Windows Mobile) and Symbian OS (as used in Nokia Series 60 and UIQ), as a software developer has open access to many parts of the system. That there are not many Windows CE viruses today is likely because it's hardly used in phones (relatively speaking). Symbian OS (via Series 60) is much more prevalent, but is supposedly also a more protected application environment.
Like on the PC side I believe viruses for just destroying things will not dominate, but rather such that generate money for the virus creators/distributors. That completely drives the PC virus "industry" today.
That was the case with the Java ME virus Red Browser, that generated expensive SMS messages. Hence not even Java ME is safe from viruses, but to a higher degree than Windows CE and Symbian OS.
Even so, Red Browser (being a typical Trojan) relied on the user's gullibility to download the application in the first place, and then accept Red Browser's sending of messages.
Windows CE, Symbian wide open to attack
Like on the PC side I believe viruses for just destroying things will not dominate, but rather such that generate money for the virus creators/distributors. That completely drives the PC virus "industry" today.
That was the case with the Java ME virus Red Browser, that generated expensive SMS messages. Hence not even Java ME is safe from viruses, but to a higher degree than Windows CE and Symbian OS.
Even so, Red Browser (being a typical Trojan) relied on the user's gullibility to download the application in the first place, and then accept Red Browser's sending of messages.
Windows CE, Symbian wide open to attack
