Cell Phone Virus Threat Overblown

An anonymous reader writes "Symantec has come under fire for claiming that 73 percent of smart phone users are aware of viruses and attacks aimed at their handsets. Wireless company WDSGlobal described this as a scaremongering tactic, with its spokesman saying: 'If you look at the viruses out there, currently there are about 14 core viruses, the majority of which are fairly benign. They are mostly developed as "proof of concept" to warn manufacturers of handsets and operating systems or the antivirus industry about potential vulnerabilities.' But Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security, believes mobile viruses and attacks shouldn't be discounted altogether, though he believes they aren't currently registering on any significant scale."

Comments

too many phones to write portable viruses?

[Anonymous Coward]

So many different phones. It's too hard to write anything that will run on them all. Even with write once run everywhere technology ;)

http://www.madecollective.com/

Re:too many phones to write portable viruses?

[3vi1]

Don't worry, after Microsoft uses it's marketing muscle to position itself as the premier OS provider for mobile phones, there will be a base set of API's hackers can write for / exploit.

No, the threat is not overblown.

[Sheetrock]

Unlike with most computer virii, there is an incentive to profit with cell virii.

I'm sure there are people already working out how to get these programmable phones to call those phone numbers in certain countries that charge you an outrageous amount per minute. The wireless companies need to take this seriously.

Re:SMS Spam is worse

[Anonymous Coward]

it's worse than that, of course. "virii" is nothing more than a possible plural for the nonexistent word "virius"