Threat Watch

Mobile Malware: What Happens Next?

Proliferating mobile spyware? iPhone botnets? F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen and Andrew Storms from nCircle offer their projections on the next threats to mobile devices.

By Bill Brenner, Senior Editor

Sensitive corporate data on smart phones will probably draw only a small number of very targeted attacks; but it only makes sense that security pros expect attack trends on mobile devices to mirror trends for all other computing environments, he says. Ultimately, the biggest threats will probably be targeted at the treasure trove of personal information stored on a smart phone.

"No one should be surprised if we see the first major threat of the migration of botnets from traditional computing devices to mobile platforms," Storms says. "Some smart phones already have more memory and higher processing power than laptops from just a few years ago. A constantly moving and adapting mobile botnet presents a compelling business proposition for hackers and an interesting real-world case study in chaos theory."

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