After Five Years, Apparently The Mobile Virus Flood Is Really Coming This Time

from the we've-been-waiting dept

For about five years, there's been an effort to whip up hype around the supposed threat of mobile viruses and malware. Pretty much all of that hype's come from anti-virus vendors, so it's been pretty suspect, particularly as this threat they've been hyping for so long has failed to materialize. It's true that there have been quite a few pieces of mobile malware, but they've failed to spread for a number of reasons. The biggest factor is fragmentation: different vendors use different operating systems on their phones, rendering all sorts of software, including malware, incompatible from one handset to the next. Mobile operators also play a part, since it's relatively easy for them to filter out malware traveling across their networks via SMS. In short, the mobile environment is vastly different from the PC world when it comes to security, so it's unreasonable to think that malware will operate in the same way in both.

Some academic researchers are now saying that the only thing holding back a tidal wave of mobile malware is that no single operating system has sufficient market share, but once one hits 10 percent, phones running it are dead meat. But that argument doesn't wash, nor do the researchers' claims that an MMS-based virus could infect an entire population of devices in a matter of hours. First, the market share figure doesn't make a lot of sense, given that platforms like Nokia's Series 40 already feature in hundreds of millions of devices, creating a large target population. Second, MMS messages still have to travel through operators' servers, so they're much easier to scan for malware than PC-based communications. As long as operators' malware filters are working as they should, it won't be too difficult to stop the spread of an MMS virus. But perhaps the biggest factor holding back mobile malware is that there really isn't any money in it for virus authors. Botnets of mobile phones aren't much use for sending out spam, and generally, the money trail created by any sort of premium-message scam can be relatively easily tracked. The closed nature of mobile networks and mobile devices makes them much less susceptible to malware than internet-connected PCs, and no amount of hype will change that.

Filed Under: mobile viruses