Viruses/Worms News

Cell phone malware attacks on the rise

Friday, October 2, 2009

As more and more smartphones with extensive online functionality hit the market, cyber criminals have begun to take notice, targeting cell phones with malware.

The first text messaging worms hit cellular networks earlier this year, originating in China. Yxes.A, also known as Sexy View, exploited loopholes in the Symbian operating system used primarily on Nokia cell phones. One the infection was complete, the worm would report personal data stored on the phone back to a central server.

Some gray-market tools for smarphones already exist, such as an iPhone app that spies on calls, texts and data sent from an infected phone, but this app must be manually installed on the targeted iPhone. Jerome Taylor, writing in The Independent, says that experts are worried that cyber criminals could figure out a way to install the spyware remotely.

Taylor also cites a YouGov survey which found that well over half of all smart phones contained personal banking details or similar sensitive data, but that less than one in 10 had any type of security program installed.ADNFCR-1765-ID-19390995-ADNFCR

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