Like it or not cell phones and other embedded systems are not left off of the malicious attacker’s hit lists. Malware authors have created new and novel malwares such as specially written viruses and worms which can create untold damage to mobile and embedded systems and their users. It’s a fact of life that you need to take into very serious consideration if you don’t want the huge bills and other negative effects to influence your world.
Not to be left out of the malicious attacker’s hit lists; cell phones and other embedded systems are also prone to malware such as specially written viruses and worms which can create untold damage to these systems, their users or both. Because these systems can reach so far and wide the problem is becoming truly insidious and the spread of these types of malwares can often be more akin to that of wildfire.
If only because of the usage patterns these systems are subjected to it is not hard to see how rapidly these types of malware can proliferate. For example every time you use your cell phone to contact another cell phone or telephony enabled system via VoIP the opportunity to spread exists. With the average cell phone user making or receiving on average 12 calls per day the numbers become of staggering proportions very quickly.
If you apply the six degrees of separation to this you will find that the potential exists for this type of malware to become globally distributed in a matter of hours not days as with most other types of computer malwares.
Apart from free phone calls what can the perpetrators of this malware possibly hope to gain? This is the first question to answer in order to be able to find the means by which they can be stopped.
If we consider the average cell phone we find that the capacities for their data storage have been sky-rocketing in recent times. We now store all sorts of user created information on our cell phones including photos, contact list, personal details, bank and other electronic information along with other documents and communications information.
To fuel this need manufacturers are producing cell phones and other embedded systems with ever more copious quantities of internal and removable storage capabilities. On top of this; many of the new embedded systems of today, have the capacity for user performed field implementable Firmware upgrades.
Thus the code that runs your embedded systems can be modified “on-the-fly” as it were to deliver more functionality. This is no doubt a great marketing feature but one with a hidden and very malevolent underside.
Corruption of the new software is; as with all software, very possible in fact probable. You may have some unpredicted event interfering with the process or other events conspiring to cause the installation to fail. No problem really; you simply do it all over again, that is you reinstall until you eventually succeed.
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