Mobile Viruses and Security

Introduction:

Viruses that attack cellular phones are no longer an exception or proof of concept. In recent months multiple variations of these viruses have reinforced their attacks, revealing an unprecedented and alarming level of exposure.

The latest generation cellular phones are no longer pure communication devices: they are intelligent multimedia centers to be used both for work and leisure, with little to differentiate them from palmtops. It seems therefore likely that the kind of security problems experienced in the PC world will likely be disturbingly similar in mobile environments.

As a result, the latest generation cellular phones have become a potentially tempting target for attack and at the same time a vehicle for malicious code. This represents a growing threat as the market increases in complexity. By observing the exponential growth of these devices registered in the past decade, we can predict that the growth in the number of smartphone users and the corresponding market around it will be much more explosive than that of PCs.

Classification: Mobile Threats:

Mobile threats can be classified in 3 main categories:

1. Viruses
2. Trojans
3. Worms

Symptoms or Indication of Infection:

Considering that without a safety application ,it is rather difficult to trace a virus, there are nonetheless situations that can warn the user. By and large, viruses typically cause anomalies on the phone, such as:-

1. An increase in communication activity
2. Quickly deplated battery
3. The receiption of unwanted massages
4. The deletion of icons and their modifications
5. Strange behaviour of mobile phones

Protective Measures to be safe from threats:

1. Establish clear policies for use of mobile devices.
2. Authenticate users and devices for data access.
3. Secured connections for data in transit.
4. Install malware protection for mobile devices.
5. Improve user awareness and training.
6. Centralize management for mobile device management and security.
7. Enforce active firewalls and Intrusion detection system.
8. Encrypt data at rest.

How does Antivirus Works?

A good anti-virus automatically analyzes all the phone’s files each time the telephone is used and – in order to prevent infections – thanks to the real time scanning function, intercepts and analyzes all the files automatically as soon as they are saved, copied, downloaded or otherwise modified, without the need for further participation on the user’s part. All viruses found are thenautomatically put in quarantine.

Future Threats:

Today, threats affect on some part of mobile phones like game, application or screensaver etc. but in future they will try to ruin the mobile phone and make it completely inoperatable.

They will affect vigourously on privacy of users, by affecting on SMS, MMS, and data theft etc.

And Many More!

The latest generation cellular phones have become a potentially tempting target for attack and at the same time a vehicle for malicious code .According to the experts , in the future we should expect a new breed of cellular device exploits. So all security software must always be kept up-to-date, so as to be able to effectively contrast attacks. It’s important to remember that old software is not designed to face new problems bearing in mind that “old” can refer to as little as a month, since anti-virus software updates are done weekly.