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Pinning Down the Spread of Cell Phone Viruses
walrabbit writes "Wang et al (2009) (from Albert-László Barabási's lab) modeled the spread of mobile phone viruses based on anonymised call and text logs of 6.2 million customers spread over 10,000 towers. Their simulations shows that the spread is dependent on the market share of a particular handset, human mobility and mode of spread: bluetooth or MMS or hybrid. 'We find that while Bluetooth viruses can
reach all susceptible handsets with time, they spread slowly due to human mobility, offering ample
opportunities to deploy antiviral software. In contrast, viruses utilizing multimedia messaging services could
infect all users in hours, but currently a phase transition on the underlying call graph limits them to only a small
fraction of the susceptible users. These results explain the lack of a major mobile virus breakout so far and predict
that once a mobile operating system's market share reaches the phase transition point, viruses will pose a
serious threat to mobile communications.' You can read the full text (PDF) and supporting online information (PDF) (with interesting modelling data and diagrams)."
(Also summed up in a short article at CBC.)
Maybe if they made a cell phone that was just a, you know, phone, and didn't have any extra crap in it, it wouldn't even be possible to spread any code, malicious or not.
The fact that we've yet to see a large mobile phone virus outbreak is wonderful proof that, (in many cases) shoddy coding, idiotic users, dodgy design methods and ample methods of communication between devices and "the wider world" does not automatically imply "virus city".
The distributed and diverse nature of the mobile OS market means that there have never been (to my knowledge) any large infections on the scale of Blaster or so forth, and yet many (popular!) phones that I've used have had simply *awful* OSes, with known security risks, monolithic kernels, and a wide install base. Such are the benefits of not having a monopoly!
Perhaps if Microsoft were the power it wants to be in the mobile market, we'd be far more familiar with large-scale infections of mobiles. I'm bloody glad it isn't -- MMS messages are down-right extortionate!
My UID is prime. Is yours?
Currently, there are a ton of mobile phone platforms, unlike the desktop. This keeps the number of viruses down, secondly, most phones run slightly modified versions of the OS, not plain versions making exploiting the same hole difficult in the large scheme of things. So as long as a vendor doesn't dominate the Mobile OS market (and with Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian and iPhone OS all going to want to stay in business, it won't) I don't see viruses as being a problem at all.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
every phone will be android
Ask them what drugs they're on. If they deny it, suggest they need meds. And have their flux capacitor reworked. And that they need to find a bucket of steam.
People want phones first and foremost to make phone calls. A smart phone, for many of us, is a dumb decision - it's too bulky, while at the same time it doesn't have enough screen to replace even a netbook ... and for people who tend to lose their phones on an annual basis, it gets expensive fast. Phones, for most people, are semi-disposable commodities. If someone loses it, or it gets stolen, or they drop it one time too many, it's not THAT big a deal. And for the majority, that's the way it should stay, because, like hard drive failures, it's not a question of if, but when - when you lose it, drop it, it dies, or it gets swiped.
...when the iPhone's marketshare reaches the kind of threshold this article talks about that results in it being the most popular target for spreading malicious code. Because the irony will be lost on a lot of people here.
Probably won't happen. Too many people just want a phone. I won't even consider an iPhone because it's too bulky. I want a flip-phone so that I can fold it up and ignore it - not have to worry about scratching it. Lets face it - how many times do you drop your phone ...
Also, how many times do you simply *lose* your phone?
You have the people harping on how cool Android will be because one won't "be locked into one app store" etc.. But in the back of my mind that just increases the risk of someone downloading some "Cool free app" that happens to be a malware app. It only has to happen a few times before the reputation gets out there. And it will happen because people see pops ups now that say, "Hey you have mal ware, down load our malware cleaner." And then they click and install nothing but malware.
But Android will end up being diverse enough to withstand most malware. Even if Android is running on 100% of the phones, not all of them are going to run exploitable versions, others will have more restrictions, still others might be without data and won't receive updates locking them into a specific version.
Also, Android is Linux. You aren't root. Theres nothing you can do to totally mess up your phone. Get a virus? No problem, just delete that user and start again. Sure, you have the downside of losing some contact info if it wasn't backed up, but its sure easier than buying a new phone.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You forget one thing: virus can very well exploit the phone itself, without any need for AppStore applications.
For example, through a hole in Flash interpreter or exploitable JavaScript vulnerability.
And that's when iPhone monoculture is going to bite you.
Through a Flash vulnerability? You really haven't paid much attention to the iPhone, have you?
In my experience people want phones first and foremost to send text messages, and to take and send photos.
People want phones first and foremost to make phone calls. A smart phone, for many of us, is a dumb decision - it's too bulky, while at the same time it doesn't have enough screen to replace even a netbook ... and for people who tend to lose their phones on an annual basis, it gets expensive fast. Phones, for most people, are semi-disposable commodities. If someone loses it, or it gets stolen, or they drop it one time too many, it's not THAT big a deal. And for the majority, that's the way it should stay, because, like hard drive failures, it's not a question of if, but when - when you lose it, drop it, it dies, or it gets swiped.
Today, people want phones first and foremost to make phonecalls. Tomorrow, they may want them first and foremost for email and video chat, with audio being a function not often used.
Most people don't want to lug a laptop around just to check email/the web, they're happy to do their surfing on a tiny device they can carry around with them anyway (a smartphone). Most people will never have a 'netbook' or even know what one is, but they do know that you can now get phones which will display your email too and have access to the internet.
As to the argument about fragility etc, I imagine similar arguments about those newfangled portable computers called laptops back in the day.
Now perhaps you disagree with this future, but it is not improbable, and your blithe dismissal of smart-phones doesn't mean they will suddenly stop being the fastest-growing segment of phone handsets.