Cell Phone Viruses

Cell phones are so popular now that over 80 percent of Americans own one. Yet it was unclear for some time why cell phone users had yet to be attacked by a major virus outbreak. Albert Laszlo-Barabasi for Northeastern University set out to find out why this was. Barabasi and his team of researchers have found that what has protected cell phone users so far is “…fragmented market share.” (ScienceDaily). The research was done by collecting data from six million cell phone users. However, Barabasi explains that cell phones will not be safe from virus outbreaks forever. He calculates that once a single market share is large enough, cell phones will likely be vulnerable to attack. It seems like this might happen soon especially since the ownership of smart phones is increasing 150 percent every year. The infection of one phone can affect others that come in contact with it quite quickly. Marta Gonzales, one of the researchers involved, explained that, “…a mobile phone virus can spread by two mechanisms: a Bluetooth virus can infect all Bluetooth-activated phones in a 10-30 meter radius, while Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) virus, like many computer viruses, spreads using the address book of the device. Not surprisingly, hybrid viruses, which can infect via both routes, pose the most significant danger.” (ScienceDaily). The researchers also found that the spread of viruses through Bluetooth could eventually affect all mobile phones, but the spread is slow. For this reason, they feel there will be enough time to develop anti-virus software for phones. Viruses can spread much quicker through MMS, but there is still a small amount of phones with the technology.

Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090521161531.htm