Mobile virus: danger of being inflated?

Up to now, the number of virus attacks and attacks on mobile phones is still quite rare, but mobile malware is still a stalking danger, as more and more people access the Internet and download content directly on "cricket." ".

According to research results announced at Mobile World Congress (Barcelona), only 11.6% of respondents said their acquaintances had been attacked by mobile phone viruses. The proportion of direct victims is even lower, only 2.1%.

The survey was conducted in both the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan, three countries with quite popular mobile Internet services. The results showed that 86.3% of respondents never "got anything" with cell phone viruses.

However, according to experts' recommendations, the more developed and more modern the mobile market is, the greater the rate of Internet usage and mobile downloads, the greater the risk of virus attacks.

The evidence is that in Japan, the most modern and vibrant mobile phone market in the world, virus attacks are more common in any other country.

" In countries like Japan, mobile phones are like computers, so the level of danger is also the highest, " commented Graham Cluley of Sophos security firm.

Rare and not dangerous

According to the website www.mobileviruses.com, a site that tracks attacks and malware targeting mobile phones, the number of "known" malware programs is only counted on the fingertips, such as Skulls. , Velasco or Commwarrior.

The most influential is probably Commwarrior, when the virus infected more than 110,000 mobile phones in Spain last year, mainly Nokia phones using Symbian operating systems. Fortunately, Commwarrior only spreads via MMS (multimedia) messages, not SMS.

Source: Timeinc " Viruses are not the current headache of security as well as mobile users. But their potential in the future cannot be overlooked, especially when mobile Internet takes off ", home analyst Pete Nuthall of Forrester Research said.

The current biggest trend of the mobile industry is to encourage users to expand into Internet services, videos, games, music and maps, instead of just texting or calling as before.

The reason is that profits from basic services have stalled, even declined in the past few years, and multimedia is considered a "medicinal god" to cure mobile networks at this time.

Do not exacerbate!

" This is a threat that we should know, but should not exacerbate the problem, " Nuthall said.

According to Cluley data, if 350,000 viruses have been detected just to attack Windows computers, there are about 200 viruses targeting all mobile operating systems.

And if the computer virus is written by organized criminal gangs, for the purpose of stealing money as well as personal information, mobile viruses "are just a demonstration of us" of young hackers dick ".

For example, a 12-year-old boy programmed a virus to attack the Apple iPhone, turning this cult phone into a brick.

He advertised it as an upgrade software for the iPhone's operating system to trick the victim, however, users would have to access his own website and download the software to the device himself.

Representative of Orange mobile network affirmed that, with the convergence of two IT and telecommunications worlds, the risk of mobile viruses will become more and more serious. The future solution to this problem may be that mobile networks will sell security services for their subscribers.