Almost 2 years ago the first self replicating mobile phone virus was found in the wild. On June 15 2004 a virus was found using Bluetooth to try and spread itself between Symbian mobile phone handsets.
At the time there was widespread concern that the problem could be huge with billions of phones worldwide being potentially vulnerable to attack. Two years on and we are yet to see a major outbreak according to F-Secure who say “The difference is that PC viruses were first found in 1986 and mobile phone viruses were found in 2004,”
Mobile phone manufacturers have long been aware of the need to protect users from viruses and are using lessons learned from years of PC manufacture to make sure the same problems don’t happen on mobile phones.
Spyware is becoming a major problem on PC’s and the trend is passing to mobile phones with spying applications being installed on certain phones. Software to monitor and record phone calls and text messages can be installed to track children but can also be installed by a third party to steal confidential information.
