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Since about 2004, when mobile viruses first came onto the scene, the world has become regrettably accustomed to hearing news about threat attacking their mobile phones. The appearance of threats on various mobile telecommunications platforms – Mosquitos on Symbian, RedBrowser on the J2ME, Phage on the Palm OS, and so on – were, rightfully, ‘big news items’ and brought a fair amount of attention to the emergence of malicious programs targeting the mobile phone. Since then, a constant parade of viruses, worms and Trojans has made “mobile malware” a fairly well-known phenomenon to the average mobile phone user.
New trends in mobile security
In recent years however, some interesting shifts in the mobile landscape have occurred. For a start, mobile malware has begun to transition from passively distributed files to malware that independently and aggressively distributes itself. Such was the case in the transition from user-downloaded games such as Mosquitos or Trojans such as Skulls, to viruses such as CommWarrior, and the infamous ‘Cabir’.
