Malware and Mobile Phones
Posted March 10th, 2010 by simon
With the news this week that an HTC Magic mobile phone from Vodafone was found to contain malware the argument about security and mobile phones has kicked off again. An employee from Panda, who just happen to make anti-virus security software, found the phone was spreading a virus and contained a password stealing Trojan. The thing is the operating system on the phone itself had not been compromised, it was merely acting as a carrier and spreading the malware to Windows based PCs that it was plugged into.
This type of incident has occurred before with other brands of mobile phone but for the most part the phones are merely acting as carriers and cannot be breached themselves. A number of companies are now offering security suites for mobile phones but the debate continues as to whether the risk is serious or not. Vodafone claimed it was an isolated incident and presumably they’ll come out with further statements after investigating.
