Time to tackle mobile malware before history repeats itself

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 03 July 2007 16:55

Your IT - Mobility

This rapid evolution, he says, is now being driven by a technically sophisticated and well funded industry that has cut its teeth on PC malware and is generating a steady stream of revenue from these techniques. "The people behind mobile malware are now much more technically advanced and can afford to hire programmers and designers to do the work for them."

So far, however Runald says attempts to use mobile malware to make money have been few and far between. "We have seen one attempt to make money out of mobile malware where it sent an SMS to a premium number at a cost of $US7 every five seconds, but we have seen only three of those type of attempts.

Runald says that users are at present largely ignorant of the dangers. "All the mobile malware we have seen so far requires the user to bypass three of four security warnings to get infected. This tells us they are not aware of the problem and think everything on a mobile phone; wallpapers, ringtones etc, is fun.

Runald says operators and manufacturers face a dilemma of not wanting to over-emphasise the dangers. Mobile phone manufacturers, particularly in Europe offer trial versions of F-Secure's software or similar products from other vendors, "but they do not want to scare users, and there have not been to many problems in Australia. There have been a lot in Malaysia [where Runald is based] and quite a few in Europe."

This, he said, could easily change, but he would not comment on whether F-Secure is in discussions with any mobile operators in Australia. However, Optus last month announced that it was offering F-Secure's PC security package to all its broadband customers, as a free services for the first year.