Virus Attacks on cellphones

An increase in virus attacks has been seen globally in October 2009, and it is only the beginning.

I warned about virus on the smart phones to become a growing problem as early as in May 2009. The attacks so far have been less malicious than just to prove that the cellphones are vulnerable to attacks through various ways.

The fact that the cellphones are less protected than the PC’s makes us believe what we see now is only a beginning.

You should begin to check your phone bill more closely now, as a virus has been found that makes your phone make a call on its own.

This is the first virus where we see some economic gain can be found, and we will talk about large money here. Just taking some few cents from each phone would make billions of dollars globally.

The hackers industry is on the loose, and they really want your money – and they are not shy of any methods to get it from you.

This is how you secure your cell phone

It is totally irresponsible of any company to not install anti-virus software on their cell phones, however it goes for all of us individual users as well.

So far there has been seen as no need to install any anti-virus software on the cellphones as attacks have not been around for so long. However, there are several things you can do yourself to avoid viruses on your phone.

Turn off the bluetooth function when you are not using this function on the phone. Virus can be transferred through the bluetooth system and the probability will increase that someone will take over your phone.

Do not open files or MMS that you did not expect to get or know about in forehand.

If you surf on the internet with your cellphone, avoid pages you are not sure of or have no knowledge about at all. You have to remember that you probably are better protected visiting the same pages with your PC since it has a anti-virus software protecting you. The Cellphone is just like a PC without the anti-virus software installed.

You can buy a anti-virus software through the internet, however you can not find any proven good anti-virus software for free for your cellphone yet.

E-mail is vulnerable in particular.

You would hardly think of surfing the internet or running a email program without using a anti-virus software on your PC. However, the smart phones have become like mini-computers with an operating system and add-on software which all are vulnerable to virus attacks.

It is just here the cyber criminals have found an interest to tap into. The hackers are no longer the boys in the boys room sitting and making codes just to prove themselves. They are now part of an industry funded by major criminal organizations able to create malicious software with almost no limits any longer.

However, the problem is that most of the users do not even know how to install antivirus software on the cellphone.

This is a problem that face lots of cellphone users today, and it just indicate that if you want to have a sophisticated cellphone, then you need to become a more sophisticated and knowledgeable user. However, one can say that sellers of the hardware should take some responsibility to enhance security of the use of their product.

You do not sell a car without complying to some safety regulations and measures.  And this lead back to the regulators, that they have no regulations on how safe a cellphone should be to attacks, and maybe this will wake up the legislators to demand some safety measures a hardware should comply with before it is sold into the consumer market.

No smart cellphone to be sold without any proven anti-virus technology enabling the user to feel some safety when using this product. Yes, it will increase the price of the product, but i believe the users will be willing to take this cost given the dangers he or she can be exposed to with a cellphone that is not protected at all.

So far there have not been any complaints in major scale based on the latest calling virus found on the cellphones.

So far you are responsible for any use of your cellphone number and have to pay to the provider any costs associated with your cellphone number.

This is were the conflict starts, who should be responsible to provide a secure service – the users or the provider?

There are several examples of people complaining of phone bill exceeding what they thought they could have been responsible for. However, it is almost impossible for the users to win through with these cases, as collecting evidence could only be done by the provider itself, which is part in the case. The consumer is bound to have lost. It is here the legislators should put some demands to the providers to be able to protect their users. The providers says they are not responsible for the virus attacks and can not be held responsible. On the other hand they provide a service that is prone to virus attacks, and should feel morally obliged to protect their consumer and clients.

We are having a mighty challenge at hand in the near future as these virus attacks will become more frequent and have more stealth power than today.

There are examples produced in the last few weeks of cellphones been taken over and started producing cellphone calls by itself, without any interference of the owner of the phone and the subscription. These examples shows that the phone has begun systematically calling phone The calls varies from few seconds to several minutes and will give the users an extra cost of few cents to Euros or USD pr call.

One examples shown to the public is that one cellphone made around 100 calls during a period of 2 days. It was only found since the user wanted to check why the phone bill showed a discrepancy from previous bills he had.

The evidence that this was a virus, comes from the fact that the calls did not show up on the cellphone call log at all. There is no doubt at all, the cellphone has been taken over by a virus.

This is only the beginning as the cyber criminals have found out tht it is very easier to take over your phone than your PC, as most have antivirus protection on the PC’s but not on the cellphones.

They have also found a very easy way to take money from the users as these services will be directed and used towards special phone services owned by the cyber criminals and therefore will get easy income from the users.

You might ask now, how is the phone infected in the first place?

There are several ways this can happen, but the most probable is that the owner has received a MMS with a virus infected file that takes over the phone. You might levee you open a photo, but in the background the cellphone loads a virus to be hidden on your cellphone.

Another way this method can occur is through surfing on the internet as some web pages have photos with this type of malicious code attached to it.

Another way is through the bluetooth system as files can be loaded onto your cellphone without your knowledge at all.

It is very difficult to detect these attacks and the only measure so far, is to double check your phone bill and make sure you can account for the calls made there. If not, then
you should consider the fact that you have been attacked and there is a need to clean your cellphone to avoid further take over of the cell phone.

By taking over your phone, the cyber criminals will gain information on your cellphone which can be valuable, like email adresses and information inside these (sensitive information, passwords, number, accunts etc)

A virus can also make the phone to call expensive pay services abroad and the owners of these services can make a hugh amount of money on this.

Some viruses are just what it is – a virus to demonstrate a methodology or a way to contribute to the open source society amongst the cyber criminals to gain more knowledge about how to exploit your phone.

The best way to avoid attacks on your cellphone is of course to install a anti-virus program and not to open any files you have no idea were they come from.

The virus is not placed on the SIM card (as of yet not found that is), but is installed in the operating system on the phone itself.